Across the Sea of Suns

by Gregory Benford

  “It stands to reason they represent the last artifacts of EM technology. The two satellites, the superconductors in the village—that is all that remains.”

  “Possible,” Nigel muttered. “Possible. But to understand Isis we’ve got to go carefully, start from scratch—”

  “We’re scratching, that’s for sure,” Carlotta said.

  “I do not want you to risk your life on an assumption.”

  Carlotta’s face darkened. “God, you push things damned far. Are you really going to keep Nikka from doing the job she was born to do?”

  Nigel opened his mouth to say, Look, this is a private thing between the two of us—and saw where that would lead.

  “You may be a goddamn living monument,” Carlotta said, “but you can’t rule by authority. Not with us.”

  Nigel blinked, thinking, She’s right. So easy to fall into that trap and

  —suddenly saw how it was for Nikka, her mind shifting, restless, clotted with memories, reaching out toward him now with hands still moist from the cooking, the determined cast to the face, the firm lift in the stomach, a tight pull won from endless hours of exercise, keeping the machine ready so that she could still go out, the outstretched hands slick and webbed by age and brown liver spots, narrowing the space between them—

  “You cannot fix me in amber,” she said.

  “Or any of us, damn it,” Carlotta added.

  To him Nikka’s face glowed with associated memories, shone in the spare kitchen with a receptive willingness.

  “I … suppose you’re right.”

  —It was 2034 again and he comes home in the warm Pasadena evening, putt-putting on a scooter. He clicks the lock open and slams the big oak door to announce himself, bounding up the staircase. In the white living room he calls out to her. Something chimes faintly in his ears. His steps ring on the brown Mexican tiles as he walks into the arched intersection of kitchen and dining nook. A woman’s spiked shoe lies on the tile. One shoe. Directly underneath the bedroom arch. He steps forward and the ringing in his ear grows. Into the bedroom. Look to the left. Alexandria lies still, facedown. Hands reaching out, clenched. Arms an ugly swollen red, where the disease was eating at her, would never stop eating—

  He knew it then, saw her falling away into nothingness. The ambulance that shrieked through night mists, the antiseptic hospital, the terrible things done to her after—all that was coda to the symphonic life the two of them had shared, had tried to have with Shirley as well, yet the three-body problem had forever remained unsolved—

  He saw abruptly that the fear of losing Alexandria had become part of him now. He had never recovered. With age, the fear of change seeped into him and blended with the losing of her. Nikka had now been with him longer than Alexandria had, and a mere hint of danger to her—

  Nigel shook his head, letting the old, still-sharp images fade.

  “Back with us?” Carlotta asked.

  “I expect so,” he said unevenly.

  Nikka studied him, understanding slowly coming into her face.

  He said, “These things take a bit of time.”

  Carlotta said, “I just won’t let you push her around.” She put her arms protectively around Nikka.

  “Why does this conversation keep reminding me of the United Nations?”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  Nikka said to Carlotta, “Still, we each have some power over the other.”

  “Not that kind.”

  “All kinds,” Nigel said. “Thighs part before me like the Red Sea. Point is, what are the limits?”

  “If I don’t stand up to you, you’ll just run right over her,” Carlotta said.

  Nikka said mildly, “That depends on the circumstances.”

  Nigel smiled. “I’m not the ambivalent type. ‘Do you always try to look on both sides of an issue, Mr. Walmsley?’ ‘Well, yes and no.’ Not my kind of thing.”

  “Well, you’d better make it—”

  “Oh, come on, you two. The crisis is past,” Nikka said.

  “Indeed. Let’s eat. Get back to basics.”

  Nikka said, “Some Red Sea later?”

  “We’ll negotiate over dessert.”

  NINE

  The mission team deployed carefully around Satellite A. One-third stayed forty klicks away, with the heavy gear and comm packs. A third scouted the surface. They found nothing special, verified Fraser’s dating and cratering count, and reconned the entrance holes. The last third set up the recon machines, tested the dark openings for sensors and trip lines, and finally decided all was well. No murmur of electromagnetic life came from the holes; nothing responded to their elementary probings.

  The machines went in, tentatively and quietly. They were blocked by a sealed passageway thirty-three meters inside the rocky crust. The robots were cramped in the passage as it narrowed down and could not find anything to free the seal. Two women went in to eyeball the situation. They attached monitors to the black ceramic seal and listened for acoustic signatures which might reveal a lock.

  The crew standing near the edge of the entrance hole was listening to the two women discuss matters. They felt a slight percussion. At the same instant the two women stopped speaking, forever. Something blue and ice-white came out of the dark hole. A millisecond-stepped scan of the video readback showed only this blue-white fog, and then—next frame—the beginnings of an orange explosion among the three human figures standing nearest the hole. In two more frames the boiling orange had reached the video lens itself and transmission stopped.

  The orange moved like a liquid, licking the surface of the satellite clean in seven milliseconds. A tongue of it leaped off the surface, at the point closest to the orbiting mission team. It projected eighteen klicks toward them and then lapped, straining in long fibers, for twenty-two milliseconds. The mission crew had by this time registered only a blur of motion on their monitors. Two-thirds of the crew—all that were on the satellite—were dead.

  The orange fibers twisted, coiled, and all but one retracted, fading. One grew, stretched, and struck the mission craft a weakened blow. High-temperature plasma blinded sensors and pitted steel skins. A gigawatt of snapping, snarling death burst over the spider-limbed ships. More died.

  The orange thing withdrew, withering and darkening and collapsing down in forty-two milliseconds to a guttering white glow at the entrance hole. The rock of the satellite was now a burnished brown. Within a further fraction of a second, all electromagnetic activity from the satellite ceased. There was no residual radioactivity. The twelve remaining crew members had not yet had time to turn their heads, to see the thing that had come and gone.

  Jesus Christ did you

  is overloaded I can’t see anything but ejecta

  they’re just gone I said no sign anywhere

  no there’s that debris, I’m picking it up now in IR but

  god-awful, they’re all smashed up, all the modules in orbit, like squashed peas

  the camp’s smeared all over the surface like something crushed it dammit launch the two now we’ll get a booster on and follow

  the people in orbit, I can’t see much but ferget the others, only survivors are gonna be in the modules an’ not too blessed many a ’em either I’ll bet

  Sylvano, I’m getting nothing on insuit for A14 to A36 inclusive, you overlay on that?

  are we safe? safe? damn I dunno we’re two hunnert thousan’ klicks out maybe that’s enough distance but what else has that satellite got, answer me that an’ I’ll say

  I never guaranteed pressure seals against whatever that orange was hell Stein measured a three kilo Torr jump in a couple millisec on an interior bulkhead, then all the instrumentation crapped out probably crushed ’em I’m sending the curves over now what you make of that

  no, all their antennas are stripped, I can see that much, that’s why we can’t get

  A14, A36 please respond

  shit can’t pick up anything this range no dish

  they’re tum
bling anyway can’t aim the inboard rifle antenna at us even if look Nigel I tell you there’s no way I can find that out so get off my band and let me

  lookit at here in the IR the whole side of module A burned away looks like see right there as it comes aroun’ into the light kind of brown and

  Alex here, look I checked those insuit wavelengths and yeah I can tune the big dish for that we’re operational in that band if we pull in the lobes a little but you sure the ordinary link is out I mean you know I’m standing by on emergency so

  of course it’s out cretin their antennas are gone if there’s any electronics active in their suits they’ll be broadcasting a Mayday with just sodding suit wiring and the only way to pick it up Alex at this range is through you

  yeah Reynolds is moving as fast as he can I’d say ETA is four hours plus easy so

  yes I well look I know and well fuck off Ted I bloody

  look I got hey hold off a minute Nigel one minute I got from Nichols the suit ID and I’m online, reading now you can knock it off look there’s we’re getting it 2.16 gigahertz right, yeah, hope this right yeah there’s lines here, three, four, I count eight, sharpening them a little now, I can read off the IDs maybe straight from the scope face here just a sec

  Nikka’s A27, Alex, that’s 2.39 gigahertz

  you say 2.39 yeah Nigel got that one and 2.41

  next to it they’re straight Maydays only 2.43 is out

  and 2.45 too

  how long do you think

  Ted we’re under boost awready an’ ’at was damn fine for the conditions seems to me considerin’

  I want to be sure you don’t walk into whatever happened to them, so you’ll have to take a slow approach, nothing too

  okay putting us there in 2.68 hours, I make it a trajectory with Ra at our backs that’ll maybe be some help

  reduce our visibility but we’ll have to maneuver y’know to reach all that debris it’s spreading out fast

  Alex says that’s not necessary anymore. There are six no eight suits responding to our relayed medical interrogation and they’re in two capsules

  Jesus eight out of how many was it thirty-six?

  Yes, that’s why I want extreme caution, though God knows with that response time the crews couldn’t have done anything even if they had been armed, with no warning they

  Nigel oh Zak look can you find Nigel for me, sounds like, I said, this is Alex, sounds like a madhouse in Central can you

  hold it, oh, okay here

  send Reynolds those coordinates pronto I want

  Nigel, glad I found you look I’ve been monitoring all the insuit Maydays and several of them are going spotty on me it’s not a relay problem I’m sure of that or pretty sure anyway and

  nope there’s nothing from the satellite, no interference so that can’t be causing it

  Alex Alex this is Nigel here I’ve cross-checked and there’s no other explanation how long until the rescue team

  hour twenty-seven minutes more Central says

  hell can’t they

  I’m sorry, I, look we just lost one of the insuits, I thought you’d, I called cause it’s the 2.39 gigahertz one Nigel, it’s just clean gone.

  The white caked skin was dead and dry, leached of color. Nigel reached out and rubbed it tentatively. He felt lightheaded and vague, the residue of many hours. Her right eyelid was closed. Her left had been burned away. The left side of her face was waxy and hardening. In the enameled impersonal phosphor light he traced a trembling finger across the familiar lines, the weathered fretworks and canyons, and marveled that the wrinkles flowed smoothly into the firming new flesh without a sign of the transition.

  “They’ll have the … eyelid … back on in an hour … they said,” Nikka mumbled. The shiny skin was still tight and her lips were swollen, purple. She had trouble with pronunciation.

  “Quiet.”

  “I’m still not … taking orders … Nigel.”

  He stared at her, unable to think of anything to say.

  “You … were right.”

  “No, I was simply cautious.”

  The bright yellow medmon continued to nuzzle her left side, pausing to manufacture more skin and then nuzzling again, patient and doglike.

  “When my suit intervened and … shut down circulation … on my left arm I thought …”

  “I know.”

  “I still don’t see … how …”

  “It chilled you down by venting gases at the right ports. Tricky. That was the only way out.”

  “I … didn’t think suits could …”

  “They can’t, not without a processor linking into a good metabolic control program. When your suit stopped broadcasting, we calculated it was probably trying to conserve its power, use its reserves on insuit medical. So Alex focused the big dish for transmission, and I called up the needed programs. Alex stepped up his power level and managed to overrule your suit. He interrogated it, got it to relinquish control and patch through to us. The shipboard programs told your confused little suit-mind how to shut you down, put you on the back burner.”

  “You make it sound … very … lighthearted.”

  His patient-visiting facade vanished instantly.

  “You always were a … terrible actor.”

  “Yes, dreadful.” He should have known he could not keep the strain and fatigue out of his face.

  “I was sure I was dying out there, Nigel.”

  “So was I.”

  “I wanted to call out to you …”

  “I know.” There wasn’t anything to say, so he held her right hand. It had a soft and worn and kneaded texture. He watched her face as passing storms of emotion swept across it silently, revealed in slight shiftings of expression in the swollen, discolored, patchy flesh.

  Through a small window nearby he could see the other survivors lying on white slabs, being operated on by teams of smocked figures. Three were being readied for Sleepslots; their damage was too extensive and deep for Lancer’s capability. They would he stored in a silent, dreamy nothingness until the return to Earth.

  “Has … has anything more come out of that …”

  “No. It looks dead as ever. The other satellite shows no signs of activity, either. Mysterious.”

  She studied him. “Unconvincing.”

  “Ummmm?”

  “You’re piecing this together … aren’t you?”

  “Having a go, yes.”

  “You don’t think the EMs … put up those … things …”

  “No. But I have only intuitions. I should never have let bloody cretinous Carlotta—”

  “I … know.” She squeezed his hand and attempted a smile. “We both … Carlotta and I … reacted … to something … I don’t know, your way of putting it … so …”

  “Undiplomatic.”

  “Direct, at least.” Her dark eyes focused on the glowing ceiling. The medmon altered pitch in its constant labor and she moved uncomfortably. “You … you aren’t the same now. Nigel. Your … I always sensed an equilibrium … in you. Now …”

  “Yes.” He looked at her and remembered the long nights together, when they had first met, lying in a cramped bunk buried beneath the Moon, Nikka patient and analytical, while he carried on, ragged and rusty-eyed, pressing against what appeared to be the problem and failing to see into it for what it was, to clutch it to him. The forward tilt in his life sent him down strange routes, kept shaping and reshaping him. In those distant days there had been no equilibrium, not even the dynamic equilibrium like walking, which was a process of falling forward and catching yourself just in time. Not even that was possible when the world showed itself as a riddle and twisted away, manifesting its greased-pig persona which was only another face, but one which had to be answered, that kneaded and molded him as part of the riddle itself, pressing—

  “You’re going out again … aren’t you?”

  So she sensed it. “Not to the satellites, no.”

  “The surface.” She scowled. The past
y stuff they had used to secure her hair transplant crinkled and a small bubble popped in its surface, leaving a yawning gray crater that quicky filled in. “In person? Or in servo?”

  “Servo for me, more’s the pity. I’m too much of a tedious tottering wreck to allow on the surface. I’m to be a flunky, really. Daffler gets to make the overtures—he’s a comm type. Cool-headed, as well.”

  “At least they should … let you set foot …”

  “Impossible, I’m afraid. But Ted is finally consenting to a direct contact, so we’ve won that. It’s the only good thing to come out of this satellite farce.” Nigel’s eyes danced with anticipation. “Plus, I’ve gotten consent for Daffler to do the overtures in person. Minimum suit.”

  “Why?”

  “So the EMs can see he’s a living creature. Not another damned machine.”

  “I don’t understand. Why not send a carefully coded signal down to them?”

  “That might be a bit of a dicey proposition, really. Ted and some of his theoreticians brought up an interesting argument against it. The surface team on Satellite A found a web of radiosensitive, metallic stuff all over the rock, woven into it in some fashion. The thing seems extraordinarily sensitive. It can quite easily resolve and monitor the EM transmissions.”

  “And ours.”

  “Quite. But it hasn’t bothered us, not until we did something out of the ordinary. Apparently our signals, coming from orbit farther out, don’t bother the thing. It’s—”

  “A watcher. Transmissions of that slow chant from the EMs … they’re okay. So are ours, since they’re coming from far away?” She frowned.

  “Yes, Watcher—not a bad name. Point is, what happens if we start returning the EM’s hailing signal—that old radio show? How will the Watchers react?”

  “So Ted’s strategy group thinks … we should hail the EMs from the surface. Where it won’t look … unusual.”

  “That’s the theory.”

  “What do you think?”

  Nigel shrugged “Those things are bloody dangerous. Best to be careful.”

  “If we only … knew more about them …”

  “Ah, but we do. A bit, anyway. The surface team transmitted a spectral analysis of the rock. It was fused in some high-temperature process, about 1.17 million years ago.”