The Forge of God tfog-1

by Greg Bear

  “I never apologized for pulling that on you.”

  Harry held up one hand.

  “You told me you had prayed to God to tell you whether I was a spaceman or not, and God had said—”

  “God had told me you were a fraud.” Harry’s face seemed almost healthy now, with the memories coming back. “I was a pretty rampant little theologian then. So you ducked out.”

  Arthur nodded. “I said I’d be going away, and never coming back — the alien inside me, rather. And it did.”

  “You refused to acknowledge you had ever acted like an alien. Total memory blank. What a scam.”

  “Our friendship survived. That surprised me a little, years later, thinking about it…”

  “I wouldn’t have believed you if I hadn’t wanted to. As you say, life was dull.”

  Arthur looked down at Harry’s shriveled arms. “It wasn’t right. I deeply regretted it. It might be the only thing between us I do regret…”

  “Besides stealing Alma Henderson from me.”

  “That was a favor. No. I mean it. I especially regret doing that to you now, because…I’m about to do it again.”

  Harry’s grin took an edge of puzzlement. Arthur’s expression was deadly serious, but enthused; his arms fairly twitched with holding something in, and he reached up to pinch his cheek, as he always did when thinking.

  “All right,” Harry said.

  That brought the tears to Arthur’s eyes. The way Harry accepted whatever was coming from him, without hesitation, forthrightly. You could be married a million years and such instant rapport would be impossible. Arthur loved Harry fiercely then. The tears slid down his cheek and he took a deep breath, then leaned over and whispered in his friend’s ear.

  “Christ,” Harry said when he had finished. He stared earnestly at Arthur. One finger slowly tapped the blanket. “Now I know I’m dreaming.” He blinked at the cloud-filtered sunshine coming through the window curtains. “You wouldn’t…” Abandoning that question, he said, “When did this happen to you?”

  “This morning.”

  Harry looked at the curtain. “Ithaca. She can tell me. I’ve been confused. She left…”

  Arthur took the metal spider from his pocket and held it before Harry’s face, resting it in his palm. It moved its legs in a slow, restless dance. Harry’s eyes widened and he made an effort to back up against the pillows. “Christ,” he repeated. “What is it? What is it doing here?”

  “It’s a miniature von Neumann probe,” Arthur said. “It explores, recruits. Does research. Gathers samples. It makes copies of itself.” He returned the spider to his pocket. “Captain Cook has his own enemies,” he said.

  “So what are you, a slave?”

  Arthur didn’t respond for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Who else…?”

  Arthur shook his head. “There are others.”

  “What if it’s another…layer of deception?” Harry asked, closing his eyes again.

  “I don’t think it is.”

  “You’re saying there’s hope.”

  Arthur’s expression changed to puzzlement. “That’s not the word I’d use. But there’s a new factor, yes.”

  “And this is all you know.”

  “All I know,” Arthur said. He touched Harry’s arm. They sat quietly for a few moments, Harry thinking this over. The effort tired him.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ve known you long enough. You told me so I could die with some good news, maybe, right?”

  Arthur nodded.

  “They let you tell me.”

  “Yes.”

  Harry closed his eyes. “I love you, old buddy,” he said. “You’ve always managed to come up with the craziest things to keep me amused.”

  “I love you, too, Harry.” Arthur stepped outside the room to call Ithaca in. She resumed her seat, saying nothing.

  “I think you must…have a lot of work to do,” Harry said. “I can’t think straight and…I’m too tired to talk much now.” He waved his finger: time to go.

  “Thanks for coming by,” Ithaca said, handing him the tape from the small recorder. Arthur hugged her tightly, then bent over the bed and took Harry’s head gently between his hands.

  Thirty years. I can still recognize him behind the mask of sickness. He’s still my beloved Harry.

  Arthur squinted, trying to hold back the flooding warmth in his eyes, trying to will another world where his friend would not be dying — ignoring for the moment the Earth’s own illness, ignoring the general for the particular, a more human scale of magic — and knowing he would fail; Also trying to memorize something already passing: the shape of Harry’s face, the set of his eyes, slightly athwart one another, even more elfin in his illness, though glazed; unable to imagine this fevered face with rounded nose and high forehead and strawlike patchy hair, even this ill frame, decaying in a grave.

  “I’ll carry you around with me wherever I go,” he said, and kissed Harry on the forehead. Harry reached up slowly and hooked his hand around Arthur’s wrist, touching his heated lips to Arthur’s right palm.

  “Same here.”

  Arthur left the room quickly, eyes forward. In the parking lot, he sat behind the wheel of the rental car, stunned, his head seeming stuffed with sharp twigs.

  “Thank you for letting me do that, I’d like to go back to my family, if there’s time.”

  As the sun rose high over Los Angeles, nothing constrained him from returning to the airport and taking the next available flight back to Oregon.

  42

  Hicks leaned against a massive marble-covered pillar, watching dozens of people enter and leave the hotel lobby. Most were dressed in business suits and overcoats; the weather outside was brisk and there had been cold rain just an hour before. Many others, however, seemed ill equipped for the weather; they were out-of-towners, gawkers.

  Much of official Washington had seemed to come to a standstill. With the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House in open conflict now, such petty considerations as budgets had to wait. The tourist trade, oddly, had momentarily increased, and hotels through much of the city were jammed. Come see your Capital in an uproar.

  After an hour, he still had not spotted Bordes, so he checked for messages at the desk. There were none. Feeling more isolated than ever, his stomach sour and his neck tense, he returned to the pillar.

  It was remarkable how life went on without apparent change. By now, most of the people on Earth were aware the planet might be under sentence of death. Many had neither the education nor the mental capacity to understand the details, or judge for themselves; they relied on experts, who knew so very little more than they. Yet even for those with more education and imagination, life went on — conducting business (he imagined the events being discussed over expense-account lunches), politics almost as usual (House investigations notwithstanding), and then back at the end of the day to family and home. Eating. Visits to the bathroom. Sleeping. Lovemaking. Giving birth. The whole cyclic round.

  A tall, gangly black youth in a green army overcoat passed through the rotating front door, paused, then walked ahead, looking right and left suspiciously. Hicks clung to the security of not moving, not making himself conspicuous, but the boy’s head turned his way and their eyes met and held. Bordes raised one hand tentatively in greeting and Hicks nodded, pushing away from the pillar with his shoulder.

  The youth approached him quickly, coat swishing around his ankles. An embarrassed grin crossed his face. He stopped two yards from Hicks and offered his hand, but Hicks shook his head angrily, refusing to touch him.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked the boy.

  Reuben tried to ignore Hicks’s discomfiture, “I’m pleased to meet you. You’re an author, and all, and I read…Well, forget that. I have to say some things to you, and then get back to work.” He shook his head ruefully. “They’re going to work all of us pretty hard. There’s not much time.”

  “All o
f who?”

  “I’d feel better talking where nobody will pay attention,” Reuben said, staring steadily at Hicks. “Please.”

  “The coffee shop?”

  “Fine. I’m hungry, too. Can I buy you lunch? I don’t have a lot of money, but I can get something cheap for both of us.”

  Hicks shook his head. “If you convince me you’re on to something,” he said, “I’ll spot you lunch.”

  Reuben led the way to the hotel cafeteria, emptying now as the lunch hour ended. They were led to a corner booth, and this seemed to satisfy the boy’s need for privacy.

  “First,” Hicks said, “I have to ask: Are you armed?”

  Reuben smiled and shook his head. “I had to come here as soon as I could, and I’m almost broke now as it is.”

  “Have you ever been in a mental institution, or…associated with religious cults, flying-saucer cults?”

  Again, no.

  “Are you a Forge of Godder?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me what you have to say.”

  Reuben’s eyes crinkled and he leaned his head to one side, his mouth working, “I’m being given instructions by, I think they’re little machines. They were dropped all over the Earth a month ago. You know, like an invasion, but not to invade.”

  Hicks rubbed his temple with a knuckle. “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “They’re not the same…whatever you’d call the things that are going to destroy the Earth. It’s hard to put in words all the pictures they show me. They don’t show me everything, anyway. They asked me to just come to you and give you something, but I didn’t think that was fair. The way they came on to me wasn’t fair. I didn’t have any choice. So they say, in my head” — he pointed to his forehead with a long, powerful forefinger — “they say, all right, try it your way.”

  “How do they oppose these enemies?”

  “They seek them out wherever they go. They spread out between the … stars, I guess. Ships with nothing alive, not like you and me, inside them. Robots. They visit all the planets they can, around stars, and…They learn about these things that eat planets. And whenever they can, they destroy them.” Reuben’s face was dreamy now, his eyes focused on the water glass before him.

  “So why haven’t they come forward sooner? It may be too late.”

  “Right,” Reuben said, glancing up at Hicks. “That’s what they tell me. It’s too late to save the Earth. Almost everybody and everything is going to die.”

  Despite his skepticism, these words hit Hicks hard, slowing his blood, making his shoulders slump.

  “It’s awful. They came too late. They had to stop off at this moon, this place with water and ice — Europa. They converted it into hundreds of thousands, millions, of themselves, of ships to spread out. They use hydrogen in the water for energy. Fusion.

  “It’s not just the Earth that’s being eaten. The asteroids, too. And really, there was more danger, I guess, of these planet-eaters getting away from the asteroids. Easier to move away from the sun. Something…Damn, I wish I knew more about what they’re showing me. They fought them in the asteroids. Now they can focus on Earth…The trouble is, they can’t explain all of it to me in words I understand! Why they chose me, I don’t know.”

  “Go on.”

  “They can’t save the Earth, but they can save some of it. Important animals and plants, germs, some people…They tell me maybe one or two thousand. Maybe more, depending on the odds.”

  The waitress took their order, and Hicks leaned forward. “How?”

  “Ships. Arks, like Noah’s,” Reuben said. “They’re being made right now, I guess.”

  “All right. So far, so good,” Hicks said. Damn…he’s actually convincing me! “How do they speak to you?”

  “I’m going to put my hand in my pocket and show you something,” Reuben said. “It’s not a gun. Don’t be afraid. Is that okay?”

  Hicks hesitated, then nodded.

  Reuben drew out the spider and put it on the table. It unfolded its legs and stood with the glowing green line on its “face” pointed at Hicks. “People are meeting up with these things all over, I guess,” Reuben said. “One of them got me. Scared the shit out of me, too. But now I can’t say I’m doing anything against my will. I almost feel like a hero.”

  “What is it?” Hicks asked softly.

  “No name,” Reuben said. He picked it up and secured it in his pocket again as the waitress approached. She laid their food on the table. Hicks paid no attention to his baked fish. Reuben brought the spider out again and laid it down between them. “Don’t touch it unless you agree, you know, to be part of all this. It sort of stings you, to talk.” The boy bit into his hamburger voraciously.

  Stings? Hicks pulled back a scant inch farther from the table. “You’re from Ohio?” he finally managed to ask.

  “Mm.” Reuben rocked his head back and forth in satisfaction. “God, it’s good to eat again. I haven’t eaten in two days.”

  “They’re in Ohio?”

  “They’re all over. Recruiting.”

  “And now they want to recruit me. Why? Because…they heard me on the radio?”

  “You’d have to talk to it, them,” Reuben said. “Like I said, they don’t tell me everything.”

  The spider did not move. Doesn’t look like a toy. It’s so perfect, a jeweler’s fantasy.

  “Why are they doing this?”

  The boy shook his head, mouth full.

  “Let me…well, at the risk of putting words into your mouth, let me see if I understand what you’re saying. There are two different kinds of machines in our solar system. Correct?”

  Reuben nodded, mouth full again.

  “One type wants to convert planets into more machines. We’ve been told that much. Now there’s an opposing type that is designed to destroy these machines?”

  “Exactly,” Reuben said after swallowing. “Boy, they were right to pick you.”

  “So we’re dealing with von Neumann probes, and probe killers.” He pointed to the spider. “How can these pretty toys destroy planet-eating machines?”

  “They’re just a small part of the action,” Reuben said.

  Hicks picked up his fork and flaked away a bite of fish. “Incredible,” he said.

  “You got it. At least you’re learning about it the slow and easy way. Me, this thing nearly blew my mind.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Well, I see things, pretty clear sometimes, really muddy sometimes. Some things have already happened, like the arrival of the machines that want to save us. They destroyed Jupiter’s moon, to, like, make more of themselves, and for energy. But the cavalry arrived a little late — just after the Indians occupied the fort.” He shrugged his shoulders. “After the bogeys came down on Earth. I suppose it’s stupid to make jokes, but it’s all crazy in my head, and I don’t want it to make me crazy. Some things I see haven’t happened yet, like, I see the Earth being blown into little rocks, more asteroids. And then these spaceships mining the rocks, eating them, making more machines.”

  “What do the machines look like?”

  “That’s not too clear,” Reuben said.

  “How is the Earth going to be destroyed?”

  Reuben paused and lifted a finger. “At least two ways. This is pretty clear, actually. I hope I can find the right words. There are things, bombs, whizzing around inside the Earth. I think we know about these, right?”

  “Maybe,” Hicks said.

  “And there are machines crawling deep in the ocean. Are there ditches in the ocean?”

  “Trenches?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Crawling along ocean trenches. They turn water into gases, hydrogen and oxygen, I think…H2O. The oxygen bubbles off. These machines put the hydrogen into more H-bombs. And then they lay these bombs along the trenches, thousands of them. All over the Earth. I think they make the bombs go off all at once.”

  Hicks stared at the boy. “I’d like to have you talk to some
other people,” Hicks said.

  The boy looked uneasy. “All I’m supposed to do is give you this.” He pointed to the spider. “Am I making sense so far?”

  Hicks stared at the silvery machine. “You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

  “Is that good?”

  “You’ve earned your lunch. If I make a phone call, will you be here when I come back?”

  “Order me another hamburger, I’ll stay here all day.”

  “You’ve got it,” Hicks said. He flagged down the waitress. Again, Reuben pocketed the spider.

  Outside the cafeteria, near the entrance to the men’s rest room, Hicks found a phone booth. He had inserted his card into the slot and picked up the mouthpiece when he realized he hadn’t the slightest idea whom to call. He had some vague notion to talk to Harry Feinman or Arthur Gordon, but he didn’t know where they were, and it would probably take hours to track them down. Besides, Feinman was reputed to be very ill, perhaps dying. The task force had been scattered to the four winds after the President’s speech.

  Dithering, he replaced the mouthpiece and stared at a potted palm, biting the corner of a fingernail. I am excited, and I am absolutely terrified. He lifted one eyebrow and glanced across the lobby. Hidden dramas.

  He could take the boy’s spider and open himself — make himself vulnerable — to whatever the boy was experiencing. But he wasn’t at all clear on what that meant. Would he give up his free will, become an agent of whoever controlled the spiders? Perhaps the spiders controlled themselves — more examples of machine intelligence.

  There was no way of knowing whether or not they were controlled by the machines threatening the Earth. Another layer of deception.

  Hicks sought the safety of the men’s room and locked himself in a stall. Even after he had urinated, he stood behind the door, trying to control his shivers. Why a spider? Not the most reassuring shape to choose.

  A battle in the asteroids. But perhaps it’s not a battle at all; just part of the demolition and making of more planet-killer probes.

  He closed his eyes and saw a shower of huge starships radiating outward, leaving behind the rubble of a ruined solar system. Would even the sun become part of this interstellar disease?