A Sword Into Darkness

by Mays, Thomas A.

  A silvered beam of suspended nanomachines lanced out from it, slicing into Wright at the abdomen. Nathan cried out in shock, along with a number of the crew, Kris included, who shrieked. They were all drowned out, though, by the screams of mindless agony from the XO himself.

  The beam scanned up and down his body, spreading the nanomachines all over him. The particles flowed around his body like a silvered mist, flaying him apart microscopic layer by microscopic layer, fast enough to watch him vanish, but too slowly to be merciful. His vacuum suit and skin vanished, and then the flesh beneath, but not one drop of blood was cast off, converted instead into ashen dust and silvered particles.

  After too long a time, the screams cut off and they could only watch as their XO was rendered and skeletonized. The crew had surged back and lined the opposite bulkhead, some crying, some comforting, and all afraid of what sort of hell they had fallen into. Nathan, Kris, and David Edwards alone stood apart, the pair of them holding their Captain in place from his instinctual attempt to go to his murdered compatriot’s aid.

  The beam stopped and the alien brought the device down. The cloud of nanoparticles kept up their work, though, and soon the XO’s bones started showing holes, thinned out, and vanished into dust. Of Wright, there was nothing then but a dense, swirling cloud of particulates.

  After a moment, purposeful motion could be seen within the cloud. Similar to a time-reversed strip of film showing a decaying body growing backwards toward life, gray and silver dust coalesced, building up a body from the bones outward. Flesh, skin, hair and features appeared, laid down layer by layer, like a line-by-line printout of a human being, differentiated by what had been there before only by coloring. A body was made up of reds and whites, and a dozen other subtle hues between them, but this pallet had only gray and silver.

  At its end, the cloud was gone, its entirety now comprising a statue of Christopher Wright, nude and flawless, inexplicably standing on the deck in disregard to the absence of gravity. As they watched, the gray and silver coloring of the body faded and gained inhuman detail. Finally, the statue took on the cast of white marble, shot through with random veins of pink and amber.

  As a piece of art, a memorial to Wright, it had worth, but not any worth that justified his murder. Nathan no longer struggled against Kris and Edwards. He simply glared at the statue and the alien with unmasked hatred.

  That hatred shifted to shock and confusion, though, as the marble statue of Wright turned toward him fluidly and smiled. The statue glanced back at the alien blocking the hatchway and then walked—again in contravention of microgravity—to Nathan, Kris, and Edwards.

  The thing that had been their XO, and which mirrored his appearance in exacting detail, nodded to them all and spoke, its voice similar enough to Wright’s to be unsettling, but stripped of all emotion and inflection, words without conscious thought or feeling. “Greetings. I am prepared to communicate with you in regards to our purpose and design. Will you speak with me?”

  Nathan shuddered, listening to the thing speak, unable to reconcile its toneless copy of Wright’s voice with the passionate, disciplined man who used to own that face. “What the hell are you?”

  The statue gestured to itself, waving a hand over its body. “The man Wright was your ambassador. I, too, am an ambassador. This is our emissary, capable of communication in human terms, an avatar of the beings you know as the Deltans, though that designation is incorrect in every way worth considering.”

  Nathan shook his head, horrified and confused beyond all measure. In the back of his mind, he realized that it could have just as easily been himself who was converted into this entity, a thought that both shamed him and relieved him at the same time. He struggled to get his mind back on track. “What do you mean, the ‘designation is incorrect’?”

  “The beings en route to your planet are not from Delta Pavonis, nor any nearby star system. Their home and their place is quite distant from any place you would know, at least in any sense that you will understand. That star system was merely the sight of their last acquisition, a priceless treasure which you destroyed during your futile attack.”

  Nathan’s eyes narrowed, and he looked back and forth between the alien and the statue of Wright through which it communicated. “Acquisition? Treasure? What are you talking about? Why are you coming to Earth?”

  The avatar smiled. It might not have any emotion in its voice, but its expression demonstrated its condescension quite well. “Your people have openly displayed their magnificent cultural wealth for all within a hundred light-years to see, with selfless disregard for protecting its unique and singular worth. And we have taken notice. We are appreciative. We adore the works of Earth and we are devoted to its safety and guardianship. We do not seek enslavement. No, no. We only want to preserve and enshrine the greatness your species has wrought.

  “We are your Patrons, and we bring you the galaxy, to the betterment of all.”

  17: “UNIVERSAL TRUTHS”

  Date Unknown; USS Sword of Liberty (DA-1), location unknown; Mission Day ???

  They all stared agape at the aliens’ marble avatar, trying to process their thoughts and their pain, to reconcile its cold, mechanistic words with its face—the face of their own XO—which smiled at them in amused condescension. Nathan’s mind and emotions whirled about, unable to settle on any one bit of the automaton’s announcement. Patrons? The cultural works of Earth? The casual murder of Christopher Wright and his rebirth as this … thing? Where did one start?

  Dave Edwards, an eminently practical—if impudent—individual, recovered from this latest string of shocks first. He pulled himself forward to float slightly in front of Nathan, focusing the avatar’s attention on him rather than his Captain. The Master Chief drew his face into an expression of contempt and distaste, the same look someone might give to a particularly large roach one has found in the sink. He shook his head and said, “Let me get this straight … we’re being invaded by art lovers?”

  The marble avatar peaked an eyebrow over the blank, colorless hemispheres it had for eyes and glanced back to the alien—the Patron—holding station in the mess’s main hatch. The alien flicked a tentacle tip and the automaton nodded and turned back to them. “That explanation is rather simplistic, but it suffices.”

  Edwards grinned with as much malice as he could muster, which at this point was a great deal. “Well, you’ll have to forgive me, but that’s about the stupidest damn thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. No one crosses light-years of space and spends decades of time to go browsing over the artifacts of another planet like some sort of interstellar garage sale.”

  Nathan’s eyes widened and his brain finally engaged. He reached out an arm and dragged Edwards behind him. Nathan scowled at the Master Chief and spun back toward the avatar. “Sorry about that, but I’ll admit that it sounds a little implausible to me as well.”

  The avatar shrugged, its features quite expressive even though its voice remained toneless and uninflected. “However plausible it might seem, given your preconceived notions of value and worth, is irrelevant. I speak only the truth, and it is a truth which should make perfect sense if you only give it some thought.”

  Nathan allowed himself to drift closer to the moving statue of his XO. “My thoughts are a little jumbled here, but I’m not getting it. We’ve imagined any number of dire motivations for you … Patrons to be coming to Earth—things like desire for our resources, or our biological diversity, or simply the desire to subjugate us as life different from your own. Art and culture weren’t high on that list.”

  The avatar smiled. “Yes, all of those inimical motivations that your fictions have ascribed to invaders, but those invaders were always merely disguised copies of invaders in your own history. Very few were developed with any sort of nod toward actual universal truths.”

  “Universal truths?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes.” The avatar turned and walked upon the deck, as if it were under the full acceleration of
gravity. It approached a painting on the bulkhead of the mess, a likeness of the Sword of Liberty, engines blazing against the backdrop of a nebula. The automaton lightly touched the canvas and then faced them again. “What makes something valuable, Captain?”

  Nathan frowned. “I don’t know. We value things for all sorts of reasons. Some for their intrinsic worth, for their value as a resource in order to fabricate something we need, or something we like. Some things are valuable because of the difficulty of obtaining them or creating them. Some are valuable because they belong to us, for sentimental reasons, or for their worth as personal property.”

  The avatar gestured with its hand for him to keep going, a gesture it had no doubt copied from the thousands of video signals it had cataloged. “Yes, yes. And what does each of those measures of worth have in common? What is the universal truth that defines worth and value, no matter your culture, your species, or your planet?”

  Nathan thought about his answers and what each of them shared. He looked beseechingly toward Kris, but she only shook her head and shrugged. He returned to the avatar and answered tentatively, “Rarity?”

  The avatar smiled broadly. “Precisely. That which is rare or unique or is difficult to obtain, is what has value—value enough to cross light-years for. And knowing this, how valuable are simple raw resources for any society capable of expending enough of them to reach another star system?”

  Nathan nodded, excited and pleased by their interaction, in spite of the hatred and revulsion he still felt toward the aliens and this vessel through which they spoke. “Given the technology you’ve already demonstrated and the sheer quantities of energy you’re expending to get to Earth, I’d imagine that raw resources are no big deal for you.”

  “Certainly not. Elements and minerals are of no difficulty to obtain. With nanotechnology and other means, an asteroid can be rendered into its component elements in days, and those elements can be recombined into whatever composition we desire, with an efficiency far exceeding chemical processing. And those molecules can then be formed into whatever we desire, with greater precision and speed than any other manufacturing method. Material wealth holds no special distinction for us—it can be obtained in nearly unlimited quantities from any single star system, not just a populated one. It is the same way with energy resources. Hydrogen and helium are abundant and available wherever we travel, and that is only considering fusion as a power source. There are other, more compact and energetic forms of power that are more difficult to obtain, but not overly difficult.

  “So, if your material and energy resources themselves are not rare enough to make us travel light-years for them, why would your cultural works be?”

  Nathan shook his head, straining to put himself in the alien’s mind. He answered slowly, “If the only reason to travel to another star system is to obtain something rare and unique, something physical that can’t be obtained elsewhere, then I suppose the answer’s obvious: while the materials aren’t truly rare, what we do with them is … because … there’s only one human race?”

  The avatar clapped its hands together. “And there you have it. Life, throughout the galaxy and perhaps the universe, is ubiquitous. It exists in most star systems in one form another, so common, yet so subtly different, that it has no intrinsic value as a biological resource for any species other than its own. Intelligent life is only slightly more unique, but again, it has no real value to any other species. Whatever discoveries it might make, whatever technology it could conceivably create is governed by universal laws common to all races. Science and technology are not unique and therefore have no value to a sufficiently advanced race, such as the Patrons.

  “Art, however, has value—value beyond merely what it does or from what it is made. Every piece of art is a unique statement, a singular expression of a localized, transient idea, alone within the entirety of the universe. Each piece is shaped by any number of factors, all of which are semi-random and unlikely to be repeated exactly in any other place or time: the biology and environment of the species creating it, the mental processes of that species, the history and aesthetics that have developed within the individual culture. All of these make a race’s art—as opposed to simple materials or biology—rare and unique, and therefore of value beyond merely the species creating it.”

  Edwards shook his head and sneered. “That doesn’t make any sense. Art only has value beyond its materials if you understand it, if you understand the emotions and the sentiment behind making it. Hell, I don’t give a damn for modern art, but some folks’ll pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for it. If a barrier like that exists within our own culture, why would we expect an alien culture to understand, appreciate, or value our art? I mean, to you Patrons, there wouldn’t seem to be any way to tell the relative value between a second grader’s refrigerator finger painting and a one-of-a-kind Jackson Pollack.”

  The avatar glanced over at Edwards and appeared vaguely disappointed—an expression he had received from the actual Wright on many an occasion. The Master Chief bristled at the look, a look his antagonistic friend and superior would never give him again.

  The statue spoke. “You assume that we are incapable of making the same distinction that you can. I will admit that an understanding of your culture and your development are necessary to properly classify your artifacts, but it is a task with which we are familiar. A child’s crude attempt at expressing its thoughts and emotions in a work of art is fundamentally different from a master-work. As a snapshot in time of an artist at that level of capability it has value, but because of the likely abundance of these ‘finger-paintings’ and because of their simplicity and coarseness, that value will be limited. If these ‘Jackson Pollacks’ are indeed rare, and if their complexity and nuance are appreciated by a large portion of your culture, trust that we will soon discover that same value.”

  The avatar nodded at its own explanation, then gestured to the alien at the hatchway and stood aside. The alien brought out the imaging device it had shown them earlier, before it had killed Wright. They all moved back, away from the device, uncertain of what it was about to do.

  Scintillating rainbows of light sprang out from the unit, coalescing in midair before them into a three-dimensional image. It was the Cathedral, lit from below by the drive-star, either before they had damaged it in their attack or repaired in the time since.

  The avatar narrated as the image swooped in to examine the alien vessel’s gothic arches and filigreed stonework more closely. “This is the Patrons’ largest and oldest collection, that of the Keltara. The Keltara were a species quite similar to your own—bipedal oxygen breathers, builders and artisans. Their level of technology when we discovered them was the equivalent of several centuries below your own. Their various sub-cultures were in a renaissance of sorts, but none had yet experienced an industrial revolution.”

  The image moved into the Cathedral. Strange sculptures and paintings of lizard-like creatures standing stooped upon their hind legs lined presentation halls and corridors. Garbled, raspy, unintelligible speech poured forth from a hologram within the alien ship, showing what they assumed to be some sort of play. The image swept on, to examine finely detailed wrought armor, ornate items of jewelry, and thousands of smaller works, from manuscripts and reliefs, to tapestries and musical instruments. The color schemes all seemed either too garish or oddly muted, designed for eyes and aesthetics accustomed to different wavelengths of visible light.

  The image changed, now showing the Polyp, the organic-appearing vessel in the Patron fleet. “This collection is representative of the combined works of the Ixkillixis, a race of ammonia swimmers. They were quite advanced in terms of mathematics and philosophy, but as they existed in a liquid medium, they never discovered fire and were unable to progress beyond simple tool-making. However, they achieved some fascinating and beautiful things with hand-shaped tools and extruded objects. They experienced their environment through a mixture of vision, sonar, and chemical tags, like yo
ur dolphins, had they progressed beyond the intelligence of dogs.”

  Inside the Polyp, liquid-filled passages displayed gently curving loops and ridges of shaped coral and stone, glowing with bioluminescent greens, pinks, and yellows, all arrayed in mathematically complex, nonrandom patterns. Strange, haunting sounds like whale-song and the clicks and chirps of dolphins issued forth from the image. A hologram within the Polyp showed trilaterally symmetric creatures, best described as boney, plated octopi with immense, intelligent eyes, swimming around one another in what could only be described as a dance.

  The image changed again, this time zooming in toward the Junkyard. To Nathan, it looked different than it had before they had destroyed it, though whether that was because it was an old image from a different aspect, or whether it was a new image of a re-constructed vessel, he had no idea. If it was a new Junkyard, how long had it taken to rebuild? How long had they been in stasis? How far from Earth were they now?

  The avatar frowned. “This is what remains of our last collection, that of the Nnnnek, whom you could properly refer to as the Deltans, since their home star was our last destination, Delta Pavonis. Most of the artifacts are now reconstructions, the originals destroyed by your senseless assault. As a result, the collection is of limited value. Reconstructions simply do not have the same worth as originals, no matter how exacting their attention to detail.

  “The Nnnnek, were a hive-minded, insectoid species. They were quite unique in that they had no identifiable sense of nostalgia. Since the individuals were just parts of a few, nearly eternal, whole minds, their works of art and culture were all perpetual works in progress. Each building, each sculpture was in a constant state of flux and alteration. Whatever they did not need at the moment was discarded with little care, and used again or not as the mood struck the over-minds down through the ages. This lead to the ‘junky’ appearance that none of your species were capable of understanding, but among the junk were individual articles of such exquisite refinement and complexity that a non-hive awareness could hardly appreciate them fully.”