Across the Sea of Suns

by Gregory Benford

  THEN THE SMOOTH STONE GROWS SLOWLY HOT, CRACKS OPEN, SOME OF US DIE, THE SONG DIMS AMONG US, BITTER BLUE CURRENTS DRIVE US DOWN, MORE OF US FALL FROM THE SONG, LONG COLD SOUNDS STAB US, AND MORE FALL, FROM THE SOUR STREAMS COME NOW WAVES, FRESH STREAMS, WE TASTE, SING WEAKLY, SPEAK, IT IS A WORLD LIKE THE ONE WORLD, THE SMOOTH STONE ON ALL SIDES IS GONE, WE BREAK WATER.

  THERE ARE WAVES CUTTING WHITE, SHARP, WE FIND SALT FOODS, LEAP INTO HOT AIRS, WAVES HARD FAST, WE CUP THE LIGHT AND SEE BIG STONE IN SKY, FAR STONES MOVING ACROSS THE MANY STONES, LIKE OUR WORLD BUT NOT OF OUR WORLD. THE SONG IS WEAK, WE SEEK TO CROSS THE WORLD BUT CANNOT, WE KNOW WE WILL LOSE OURSELVES IN THIS WORLD IF OUR SONG IS STRETCHED FARTHER.

  BUT THE YOUTH HAVE A STRANGE SONG AND THEY GO OUT. THEY FIND FOOD, THEY FIND BIG ANIMALS IN THE WAVES AND BIGGER ANIMALS THAT CRUSH THE WAVES, THEY STRIKE AT THEM IN THE WAY WE ONCE DID LONG TIMES PAST, THROW THEIR WEBS TO BRING DOWN THE CRUSHERS OF WAVES.

  THESE CRUSHERS ARE NOT THE BIG ANIMALS WE KNEW IN THE WORLD AND WHEN THE YOUTH DRAG THEM DOWN CLOSER TO THE CENTER THEY ARE NOT RIPE, DO NOT BURST WITH FRUIT, ARE FIERY TO THE MOUTH, AND KILL SOME YOUTH WITHOUT RELEASING THE PODS THAT WOULD DRIVE THE YOUTH TO THE LAND, DRIVE THEM TO THE AIR TO SUCK, DRIVE THE CHANGE TO MAKE THE YOUTH INTO THE FORM THAT WOULD BE US. THESE THINGS THAT FLOAT AND CRUSH THE WAVES WE FEAR AND FLEE, BUT THE YOUTH EAT OF THEM AND YET DO NOT GO TO THE LAND TO CRAWL; WE LOSE THE SONG WITH THEM FOREVER, THEY FLY THE WAVES NO MORE, THEY TAKE THE BIG ANIMALS THAT WALK ABOVE THE WAVES. THE YOUTH HAVE BECOME ABLE TO KILL THE BITTER WAVE-WALKERS, THEY FEAST ON THE THINGS IN THEM. WE SEE FROM A DISTANCE THAT IT IS YOU THE YOUTH EAT, EVEN IF YOU ARE SICK AND DEATH CAUSING, YOU ARE KILLED IN THE SKINS THAT CARRY YOU WALKING THE WAVES. THE YOUTH DO NOT SING, THEY SPLIT YOUR SKINS, THEY GROW AND EAT ALL THAT COMES BEFORE THEM.

  NOW YOU ARE GONE LIKE US, NEARLY CHEWED. WE COME TO HERE, WE DRIVE THE YOUTH AWAY, THE ACT CHEWS US BUT DOES NOT FINISH US. WE FIND YOU IN THE SKINS YOU LOVE AND WE CANNOT SING WITH YOU. WE FIND YOU ONE MAN AND IN ONE YOU CAN SING; TOGETHER YOU ARE DEAF. YOU ARE THE TWENTY-FOURTH WE HAVE SUNG WITH ON THE WAVES YOUR KIND CANNOT HEAR UNLESS YOU ARE ONE AND CANNOT SING TO EACH OTHER. MANY OF THE OTHERS WHO SUNG WITH US ARE NOW CHEWED BUT WE CAN KEEP THE YOUTH AWAY FOR A TIME WE GROW WEAK THE YOUTH RUN WITH SORES AND LEAVE STINK IN THE CURRENTS FOUL WHERE THEY GO WE SMELL THEM THE WORLD THAT WAS FALSE WORLD MADE THEM THIS WAY NOT AS THEY WERE WHEN WE KNEW THEM IN THE WORLD THAT WAS OURS THEY CANNOT SING BUT KNOW OF THE PLACES WHERE YOU SING TO EACH OTHER AND SOME NOW GO THERE WITH THEIR SORES MAY BE CHEWED BY YOU BUT THERE ARE MANY MANY OF THEM THEY ACHE NOW FOR THE SKINS-THAT-SINK, BUT THEY ARE MADNESS THEY ARE COMING AND THEY CHEW YOU OTHERS LAST

  FIVE

  Each night after it got too dark for Warren to write in the yellow firelight, they would move inland. The mosquitoes stayed near the beach and there were a lot of other insects, too. Warren listened to fish in the lagoon leaping for the insects and the splashing as the Skimmers took the fish in turn. He could see their phosphorescent wakes in the water.

  They smeared themselves with mud to keep off the mosquitoes, but it did not keep off the ticks that dropped from the trees. There was no iodine in Gijan’s box of random items.

  Putting a drop of iodine on the tick’s tail was the best treatment and second best was burning them off. Each morning the men inspected each other and there were always a few black dots where the ticks burrowed in. An ember from the fire pressed against the tick’s hindquarters made it let go and then Warren could pull the tick out with his fingernails. He knew that if the head came off in the skin, it would rot and the whole area would become a boil. He noticed that Gijan got few ticks and he wondered if it had anything to do with the Asian skin.

  The next morning Warren got a good catch, and when he brought it in he was sore from the days of work on the raft. After eating the fish he went for more coconuts. The softer fronds were good, too, for rubbing the skin to take away the sting of mosquito bites and to get the salt out. Finding good coconuts was harder now and he worked his way across the island, up the ridgeline and down to a swampy part on the southern side. There were edible leaves there and he chewed some slowly as he made his way back, thinking. He was nearly across a bare stretch of soil when he saw it was the place they had laid out the SOS. The light-colored rocks were there but they were scattered. The SOS was broken up.

  Gijan was looking in the storage box when Warren came back into the camp. “Hey!” he called. Gijan looked at him, calm and steady, and then stood up, taking his time.

  Warren pointed back to the south and glared at the man and then bent down and drew the SOS in the sand. He rubbed it out and pointed at Gijan.

  Warren had expected the man to give him a blank look or a puzzled expression. Instead, Gijan put a hand in a pocket.

  Then Gijan said quite clearly. “It does not matter.”

  Warren stood absolutely still. Gijan pulled the pistol casually out of his pocket but he did not aim it at anything.

  Warren said carefully, “Why?”

  “Why deceive you? So that you would go on with your”—he paused—”your good work. You have made remarkable progress.”

  “The Skimmers.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the SOS …”

  “I did not want anyone to spot the island who should not.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Several. The Japanese. The Americans. There are reports of Soviet interest.”

  “So you are—”

  “Chinese, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I would like to know how you wrote that summary. I read the direct messages you got from them, read them many times. I could not see in them very much.”

  “There’s more to it than what they wrote.”

  “You are sure that you brought all their messages ashore?”

  “Sure. I kept them all.”

  “How do you discover things that are not in the messages?”

  “I don’t think I can tell you that.”

  “Cannot? Or will not?”

  “Can’t.”

  Gijan became pensive, studying Warren. Finally he said, “I cannot pass judgment on that. Others will have to decide that, others who know more than I do.” He paused. “Were you truly in a shipwreck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Remarkable that you survived. I thought you would die when I saw you first. You are a sailor?”

  “Engine man. What’re you?”

  “Soldier. A kind of soldier.”

  “Funny kind, seems to me.”

  “This is not the duty I would have chosen. I sit on this terrible place and try to talk to those things.”

  “Uh-huh. Any luck?”

  “Nothing. They do not answer me. The tools I was given do not work. Kinds of flashlights. Sound makers. Things floating in the water. I was told they are drawn to these things.”

  “What would happen if they did not answer?”

  “My job is over then.”

  “Well, I guess I’ve put you out of work. We’re still going to need something to eat, though.” He gestured at the raft and turned toward it and Gijan leveled the pistol.

  “You can rest,” the man said. “It will not be long.”

  PART FIVE

  2080 INTERSTELLAR SPACE BETWEEN RA AND ROSS

  ONE

  In 2066, earth had launched a series of exploratory probes to the nearby stars. Now they were arriving, sniffing at the myriad mysteries of Epsilon Eridani, Ross 128, 61 Cygni, and other cryptic names that had once been dry catalog symbols and now were luminous targets. The probes transmitted their data both Earthside and to Lancer, to save the years of delay in relay. To filter and understand the multichannel flux, Ted Landon set up teams composed of high-flow data analysts, assorted scientists, and anyone with field experience. Nigel drew a slot. To master the lock-in prosessors he had to be sealed off, open only to the steady drumming hail of probe data, focusing on the ebb and surge of sensation from the probes as they
glided through stellar systems, plunged into thick atmospheres, and finally jerked forth from their capsules and clanked across the alien lands themselves.

  The first automated probe reached Barnard’s star and decelerated, passing two small planets. The signals arrived only a few months after Lancer left Isis. The Mercury-sized worlds were barren, uninteresting. There seemed to be nothing interesting about the stars, beyond the routine measurements of bow shock waves near the planets, asteroid counts, and sunspot analysis. Halfway across the system, the probe stopped transmitting abruptly. It was never heard from again. The astronomers suspected that, since it was crossing the ecliptic plane of the system at the time, the probe had failed to dodge an asteroid.

  Nigel drew time in an isolation capsule, monitoring the incoming stream of data from Epsilon Eridani. The probe glided in, spotting the distant moving glimmers that were planets, sampling the ghostly breeze of the solar wind, mapping the plane of the Eridani ecliptic, sketching in the orbital histories with deft Newtonian strokes. The three people in their cool dark pods, laced with holographic, full-senses data, saw the probe flash by a chunky dim gray patch of light.

  Before they could piece together their own impressions, the astrometrical programs aboard the probe scanned the nearby volume, listened for infrared mutter of similar dabs of gray, and found four: an Oort cloud of protocomets, making their slow swoops in shrouds of dust. The spidery probe rushed on, following its own logic. Human receptors piped into the flow of numbers and spectra, making a picture with human implications. Star mass: 0.83 solar. Six planets. Spectral type K2, sunspots visible. Two gas giants; one Mars-size world; the rest, mere rocks. No oceans, no life.

  Yeah but the terrestrial-type one has an atmosphere, see as they all felt the probe slowing, maneuvering Sure no oxy though and no disequilibrium gases far as I can the world was swelling before them Point taken, but that’s mere theory a smattering of jumbled grays and browns and blacks Look that’s cloud cover all right, the prelim missed it fields of stone glinting like distant windows of a city reflecting the setting yellow sun I dunno mica maybe crumpled mountain ranges, warped valleys Some signs of tectonics an’ I’d say some volcanic action over there by the terminator windswept and ruined plateaus, gullied and gray A trifling planet really, thin atmosphere, about 0.32 Earth mass no spatterings of green near the carving rivers Look at that readout, CO2 plus the expected traces howling storms, blue on the rumpled brown lands, no ears to mark their passage Whole system’s a flop if this is the best the probe arcing over the planet, pondering to itself the rewards of deploying a surface craft No wait go back to that last image the curve of this world a shining silver against black Right the horizon shot a sliver of gunmetal gray like a fine wire Funny planet this small with a ring glowing softly, but as the probe arcs onward the supposedly straight line it refuses to fatten, to show a disk Naw look it runs straight down to the surface pinned to the equator I’m buggered it it’s not a Skyhook the chilly, answering silence as they stare at the enormous artifact, its long curve now coming into view, still hairlike, thin and tapering down to the equator Why why would anybody put up a Skyhook in a barren nothing moves on the fiber. They can see that in the successive exposures the probe sends, its own judgment centering on the thin wedge of gray against the stars Mining? Nothin’ else worth a damn down there the probe backs away now, the view shifts Perhaps it wasn’t always that way wheeling across star fields You mean some life down there, a civilization? But there’s no trace of a speck that grows Not now, no the probe curving around the bleak horizon On a geological time scale, what would last? a swelling round dot For something to, well, there’s no life at all, what could the crescent flawed, eaten Yeah if the natives put that up they’ve been gone awhile, we’re talkin’ tens of millions of years easy an’ I don’t believe irregular, grays and blacks, a side smashed as if by a grazing impact, stress lines in the ancient rock of this world’s small moon Stands to reason, sure there’s some cratering but not that much and anyway how can you kill a whole biosphere yet something flares sudden bright orange in the shadowed pits of the moon Hey you see that a churning flame Just like jetting out, swelling toward the probe A thing like before, a Watcher filling the lenses Must be two hun’red klicks range, more even orange chaos flecked with angry reds God I hope hands clenched though they all knew this happened years before, parsecs away It’s reached us but the fast-frames seize them as the orange arms extend and wrap around the disk antennas Christ if it burns those we’ll the inboard acoustics register a rippling shock which comes to the three as a rumble Losing the low-frequency stuff a searing, sizzling feel It’ll fry for sure if that hits the equipcomp plasma ionizing the precisely aligned interferometers Telemetry’s fluttering lenses which have faced the high vacuum for a decade—fogged, pitted and fractured Losing pressure in right cryotank waning heat splashes through the thin seals Goddamn goddamn look at ’at the roiling clouds thin, violet jets flare, ionized hydrogen spits UV and fades Most a the microwave is out the stars return Main functions are truncated the dwindling dot sucks in its own bloodred tongue It was ’at flyby velocity an’ rebound, got it up to over nine klicks a sec the cryptlike worn surface below blurs and shimmers with distance Just outran it is all the probe falls starward, blinded in the black, and numb I wonder why it left the Skyhook its engines dead It? What it? and returns dutifully to measuring the wisps of solar winds The it that put the boot in on that wasteland, leaving our Watcher behind the woman pipes his image into her plex, squints at him Maybe too much trouble to knock it down they uncoil, each, from the tie-in labyrinth After doing that to the surface? sour, haggard, each trembling God knows how but green Control queries flashing unnoticed That’s an assumption sure Okay maybe having an elevator handy Nigel’s head bowed, his hand rumpling gray hair absently For what? Work on the surface? cool enamel glow Or bring up raw materials, how do I know? rapping at the hatches of each, the external team worried It’s been there a bloody long time, to make repairs I’d venture, remember the gouge, passing junk, you have to expect that, so it mends itself sweaty and close, then the hatch pops Well could be but why take a shot at us untangling the electronic spaghetti When the one back at Isis simply let Lancer go you mean? Um, perhaps, perhaps this one felt it had nothing more to learn? Um.

  TWO

  Nigel wondered how, in as carefully managed a society as this, “lurkey” had become the accepted slang for lousy turkey.

  He worked on the lurkey itself, it was a huge, sweaty mass, aslosh in nutrients. It grew so quickly that a team had to cut slices, using servo arms, so the meat didn’t outrun its chem supplies. Pseudolife, with all genetic checks on excess deftly edited out. Malthus, exponentiated.

  When he had the time he used some of his precious store of wood, shaping and planing the boards until they had a satin finish. Sawdust exuded its sweet weight into the impersonal ship’s air. He scavenged some of the forced-growth cellulose stands from the greenhouses, and worked the soft chunks with earnest energy, hammering and planing and using the ripsaw for texture in the speckled grain. There was not much strength in the stuff but it would make furniture. It reminded him that he, too, was three-quarters water, rushing and subsiding according to the hollow knocking in his veins, a hydrostatic being. With a pinch of salt added, to signify his origin.

  Every spring when he was a boy, Nigel remembered, he had gone for hikes in the wet meadows. There and in the roadside ditches he would hear a small, shrilling chorus which sounded for all the world like an endlessly repeated, “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here.” Frogs, confident little fellows, announcing their occupancy of that particular ecological niche. He suspected that now, to some greater ear than ours, man’s expanding bubble of radio babble must make a similar ringing that billowed but a short way into the night. Only when nearby would it be bothersome, when one could pick out one strident voice at a time.

  From the heights of the nearby cloaked hills, the frogs blended, not too badly, with all the other ambitious v
oices that, in croaks and chirrups, were saying the same thing—We’re here, we’re here. A bicyclist, intent on his destination, might wheel through the frog chorus, sensing it was there but giving it no attention, not trying to make out the myriad voices. A truly advanced civilization in the galaxy would probably do the same thing to the soft buzz of radio, or to the occasional flyby probe humming, mosquitolike, past its ear.

  Others might take a casual slap at such a passing irritant. Or even call for pest control.

  Wolf 359 was a dim M8 star with only a tiny nearby volume capable of supporting life. Yet a world orbited there, one remarkably similar to the one around Epsilon Eridani: small, bleak, with a thin wisp of atmosphere. Not ancient, like the skyhook world, but there were signs that once it had been inhabited. No biosphere remained. The small lakes were drying up. The M-class stars are the longest lived of all, and the spectra of Wolf 359 said it was as old as the galaxy. There were aeons enough for life to arise beneath this lukewarm sun.

  And time for it to die. The air and land carried traces of the chemical imbalances which are the very minimal definition of life. These signs were slowly ebbing away, but they argued for a biosphere that must have existed within the last few million years.

  Around the small planet there were two moons. One was quite sizable, barely bound to its primary. The other was smaller, perhaps a few kilometers across. It had odd markings here and there, markings which might be natural results of meteorite bombardment over time, and then again might not. The probe caught only a fleeting glimpse of it as it arced around the brown and weathered world below, and then went on. It passed by a large gas giant planet on its way out of the system.