Acts of Conscience

by William Barton

  The library AI whispered, Cosmological constants. Anthropic principles.

  I said, “So what if it’s true? What difference does it make?”

  “Perhaps none. Perhaps all the difference there is.”

  Nothing ever really matters in the context of our little lives, does it? Big deeds are only important to the Men Who Count. The rest of us just try to stay out of their way, stay whole, survive. I said, “If you could prove that, you’d know, sooner or later, anything you did would be... noticed.”

  The Kapellmeister said, “Nobody noticed when we did it before.”

  Martínez slid down the slope, skidding to a stop beside us. Reached out and touched the telecannon, feeling its texture through the sensitive fingers of his suit. “I don’t see how something like this could be used to destroy any God damned universe. I mean, you’d need a fuck of a lot of them to...”

  The Kapellmeister said, “In a universe consisting entirely of Planck sockets, matter is defined by the characteristics of the socket’s ‘contents,’ the so-called Kaluza-Klein entities. We understand that the entities, as such, are merely a convenient mathematical fiction, used to describe certain behaviors of the properties of the sockets themselves.”

  Martínez said, “I don’t need you to explain elementary physics.”

  Quite. This is the stuff you learn as a child, if you’re interested, certainly learn in technical school, when you begin to need it. Antigravity was the first thing we got, when we learned to manipulate some of the more obvious properties of Kaluza-Klein entities, the properties that gave rise to the conventional laws of physics, electromagnetism, chromodynamics, quantum gravity... The Kapellmeister said, “In such a lattice-based cosmology, movement is an illusion.”

  I remember being startled when I found out Heisenberg’s principle was just an expression of the “random walk” taken by the Kaluza-Klein entities in their world of rigid, motionless sockets. A particle is probably here. But it might be there. Or someplace far away. Or nowhere at all. Vacuum energy is the probability that the properties of an “empty” Planck socket may spontaneously assume some nonzero value. Some people think that’s how the universe was born.

  The Kapellmeister said, “Once you learn to manipulate the locus variables of a Kaluza-Klein entity, you get faster than light travel as an immediate consequence, though without synchronization and simultaneity between Planck sockets, there are obvious limitations.”

  The library whispered, Each Planck socket is an independent n-space whose existence is not determined by the existence or nonexistence of other such spaces. There is no universal program counter.

  Of course not. Pretechnological societies have a word for their hypothesized universal operating system. They call it God.

  The Kapellmeister said, “Shortly before the Shock War, some fine scientist, somewhere, discovered a means of inducing a standing-wave synchronization in a small number of clustered Planck sockets. It would persist only for Planck time. So you induce synchronization, then in the following ‘tick,’ you redefine the locus variables of the Kaluza-Klein entities. There is, of course, no way to redefine simultaneously any other quanta, for then the entities have gone. The inertial quantum was of particular interest.”

  Martínez, voice, soft, said, “So. How small a mass are we talking about here?”

  Do I understand what they’re talking about? The good doctor thinks he does.

  The Kapellmeister reached down with one chela and picked up a bit of ice roughly the size of a big marble, a good-size shooter. “This is the largest teleport bomb that was ever managed.”

  Martínez shrugged. “So you shoot it across interstellar space and, when it gets where its going, it explodes in an inertial compression wave with the energy of a good-sized fission bomb? I guess if you did it to a planetary core, that’d cause a lot of damage. Enough to blow up a whole planet, though? I doubt it.”

  I remembered the Kapellmeister telling me about his electromagnetic pulse phaser, sufficient to blow up stars, apparently the most fearsome weapon in the Salieran arsenal. Why would they need this puny thing, when they had something like that? I tried to visualize the process described and... “Shit.”

  Martínez and Kapellmeisters looking at me. Hell, maybe the pod software was translating for all of them, just the way it could, apparently, talk through the symbiotes in my brain. I said, “You don’t shoot a hunk of ice, doc. You synchronize a section of Planck lattice equivalent to the hunk’s space. Then you redefine its locus variables.”

  The Kapellmeister said, “Correct.”

  Martínez said, “So what? That’s just another way of saying the same thing.”

  I shook my head slowly. “No. Matter and energy are constant. E=mc2. Space is real, even in a lattice context. So you’re talking about the energy necessary to accelerate a physical body to the speed of light, push it through the interstellar medium at the speed of light, decelerate it to a stop at the target and...”

  His eyes looked startled. “Uh. Maybe a few thousand gigatons? Enough.”

  Enough to blow up a planet, but still nothing really spectacular. I kept thinking about the voids.

  Finally, the Kapellmeister said, “Since matter and energy are equivalent, an event horizon forms at the target. Since only the locus of the original Kaluza-Klein entities has been redefined, there is insufficient mass to maintain this event horizon, which, in consequence, undergoes classical inflation.”

  Martínez seemed to freeze in place, eyes far away.

  The Kapellmeister said, “While this does disrupt the material structures at the target, in effect an explosion, most of the mass in the target zone falls onto the expanding event horizon. When the event horizon dissipates, the accumulated mass falls into the exposed region of compressed space, forming a new event horizon which then contracts to the appropriate radius, usually on a quantum-mechanical scale.”

  I said, “And then Heisenberg tunneling disposes of the evidence.”

  The Kapellmeister said, “Correct.”

  Long silence.

  Then Martínez whispered, “Scale effects. If you could synchronize a sufficiently large Planck domain, the inflationary era...”

  The Kapellmeister said, “We wondered about that too, but we still don’t know where the universe came from.”

  o0o

  I awoke to pale darkness, face bathed in a hot sweat, lying in my bed aboard Random Walk, heart pounding in my chest. Diffuse shadows here and there, cast by the angles of the furniture in the dim radiance of the wall panels. No more ghosts. No one here but me.

  I’m used to being alone. More used to it than I ever realized. Still, I wish there were someone here now. Even a dollie to comfort me. Even that.

  Afterechoes of our grim conversation, back in the ruins of what the Kapellmeister told us had once been a StruldBug military nest, nest most likely destroyed by covert action in the days right before the war. Or perhaps a nest of survivors, beings who were somehow missed, just as Salieri was somehow missed, taken out later on by some wandering, vengeful ship, some lone Adversary scout perhaps...

  Plenty of evidence, the Kapellmeister had said, that there were survivors, though we never found anyone. Not that we looked for long.

  Images from my dream, magic weapons reaching out to infinity, snuffing out bits of the universe, incidental explosions no more than a tiny side effect, emblematic of the real destruction. Martínez puzzling over it, wondering if the old missing matter question, long ago solved, he thought, had anything to do with...

  Dreamtime more revealing. Pockets of nothing engulfing lifeforms as far as the StruldBugs and their Adversaries could reach, carrying them off to... somewhere else.

  Destruction, the library had whispered. Complete destruction. Correct, the Kapellmeister had said.

  And what will you do now?

  Will you destroy the teleport bomb?

  Will you go home to Salieri and say it is no more?

  The Kapellmeister had said, No.
Where there’s one, there will be many. Best we face this now.

  Kapellmeisters chittering and snapping at each other, scissor-speech untranslated, coming to no useful conclusion, nothing they could... say.

  Me? A brief, cold wondering, a terrible wish that there was something... anything I could do. Save humanity? No. Humanity doesn’t deserve to be saved, myself least of all.

  Innocent bystanders.

  So many innocent bystanders...

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will sleep, but the images from the dream wouldn’t fade. Finally, I got up, got dressed, went out into the hall and up to the control room, thinking I’d sit in the pilot’s chair and look out over the lovely landscapes of Snow and brood about... nothing. Brood about nothing.

  From its place in flight engineer’s chair, the Kapellmeister turned blue eyes my way, and said, “I am not surprised to see you, Gaetan.”

  I plunked down in the pilot’s seat, my seat, God damn it, looking out at spacecraft, at domes and hills, faraway mountains and flat orange Six in the starless black sky. Almost enough to make me forget, it’s so beautiful. Why isn’t beauty enough? No answer. I said, “I forget whether you guys sleep or not.”

  The Kapellmeister said, “If we did, I would be unable.”

  I turned to stare at it, wishing I was able to read more from it than I could. Not wishing for a human face, just for... something like a friend. “Are we so similar, you and I?”

  Silence.

  Then it said, “It would seem so.”

  “You and I? Not just our two species.”

  Silence. Then, “Our similarities as individuals transcend the evolutionary gulf that lies between us. At times, in your company, though we can hardly communicate at all, I feel less... alone.”

  I felt a little squirm of embarrassment, a desire to turn away. Like having some comrade suddenly declare his undying love or something. Some terrible playground faux pas. Shit. All this and I can’t escape my own idiocy? I said, “I... guess I understand.”

  Silence.

  Then it said, “Gaetan, what should I do?”

  Christ. I said, “You’re asking the wrong guy. I’ve never been able to do... whatever the hell the right thing is. Find yourself a hero. Ask him.”

  “Do you know any heroes?”

  “No.”

  More silence, then, “If it were up to you, what would you... want?”

  Me? Personally? What would I do with the teleport bomb? Hell, shove it up my own ass and pull the trigger? I watched the Kapellmeister’s eyes float expectantly, waiting for me to speak, and wondered what it’d make of a statement like that? Nothing, probably. Maybe just play it safe, tell the truth, tell it that I’d never known what I wanted, didn’t have any ideas now. Except... you do know, don’t you Gaetan?

  I said, “I always wanted a fair shake for myself, back when I thought I was... innocent. If there are innocent people in the world, beings in the universe, that’s all I’d want for them.”

  “Whom?”

  “I don’t know. Wolfen. Dollies. Arousians. Guys living in cardboard boxes because some people think all the things they can steal actually belong to them.”

  Silence. Then it said, “Your answer is larger than my question, Gaetan.”

  No shit. I said, “Everything would have to... change.”

  The Kapellmeister said, “Why do you think you don’t have the courage to be an agent of change?”

  I felt a slight pang of resentment at this... thing, menacing me and all my kind with incomprehensible destruction. Who are you to be calling me a coward? I said, “Courage is for people who think they’ve got something to lose.”

  The Kapellmeister said, “Perhaps you’ve got more than you realize, Gaetan du Cheyne.”

  More what? More courage, or merely more to lose?

  Why don’t I know?

  Twenty: A day and a night

  A day and a night, then Green Heaven hung in space before us once again, a majestic, frosted blue jewel. Vast, indigo oceans. The antarctic landmass, looking so small, with its pale tan deserts, dark green jungles, shining, metallic plains, bare-sloped mountains. Koudloft, glittering brilliant white in the summer sun.

  I can imagine myself down there even now, standing on the brow of some forlorn hill, warm zephyr carrying the sweet scent of life, Tau Ceti floating low in the sky like the eye of some vast, blind god. If there’s poetry anywhere, it’s the poetry of nature.

  I looked over at the Kapellmeister. It sat silent, legs curled under, seven eyes apparently focused on the rapidly swelling world. I had a spare, stark realization that now, whatever we did, whatever happened, the consequences, for me, were immaterial. Let them destroy the human race, all the races. I’ll survive because this one will protect me.

  Comforting? No. Because it doesn’t matter, and neither do I.

  The Kapellmeister said, “Sometimes, I have an urge to take one of the old ships and run away, flee into the cosmos, see all the worlds, and never again deal with anything but beauty.”

  I said, “I wonder how long it’d take to tire of splendor.”

  Silence from the Kapellmeister, then, “Not long, perhaps.”

  When death is inevitable, you don’t need a reason to die, and therefore, no reason to live. Time passes and, in the end, you are consumed. Life makes dollies of us all. As we bit into the air, pink plasma flaring outside, I said, “If you had a reason to, would you live forever?”

  The Kapellmeister seemed fascinated by the way the landscape below grew and flattened, mountains suddenly humping up, sky overhead changing from black to indigo to turquoise blue. It said, “There is no forever, Gaetan.”

  No, I suppose not.

  The Koudloft was sweeping by below us now, barren white hills catching the shadow of the ship, reflecting the pastel light of its drive energies, mirroring the color of the sky. Suddenly, the hills came to an end. We crossed a short stretch of bare tundra, a little belt of dull, gray-green taiga, then the ship flared, hovering over the edge of the Koperveldt, and sank to the ground, blue light swirling briefly around us.

  Contact, whispered the navigation subsystem. Drive suspend.

  Gravity’s vector suddenly changed, metadynamic forces releasing me, Green Heaven’s mass seizing all my atoms at once. I stood, stretched, looking out the window at familiar territory, and said, “I feel like I’ve made a decision.” Unusual feeling, in a life where all my decisions were made for me, by other people, or simply by default. The Kapellmeister hopped to the floor. “We both have,” it said.

  o0o

  Outside, on a grassy Koperveldt hillside, the wind was very sweet indeed, carrying with it a thousand unidentifiable Rock Candy Mountain smells, almost masking the burnt-toast odor Random Walk’s drive had left behind on a little patch of fried ground. We walked away from the shadow of the ship, angling up toward the ridge, stopping where we could look down into the little valley where the Arousians had made camp.

  Tau Ceti hung in the blue-green sky, just the way I remembered it, throwing warm golden rays over pale, rolling hills, casting deep blue shadows down among the crags of the remote, towering mountains. I took a deep breath, trying to shake off unexpected euphoria. “Christ. I feel like somebody made this just for me.”

  The Kapellmeister said, “Sometimes, when I come unexpectedly on some valley full of mist and shadow, something which reminds me of a childhood scene on Salieri, or even just a dream, remembered from someone else’s childhood, I experience that feeling too.”

  Is that all it is? I don’t want to believe that. Not now; not ever.

  Down below, down in the valley, there are the Arousians’ clustered tents, familiar tripods of camera equipment already set up by the stream. And there are the Arousians themselves, stick-bug men already walking this way, walking up the hill to greet us.

  Over there? Yes, there in the shadows of a baarbij bush, a small cluster of dollies, kneeling in the shade, waiting, without the slightest inkling of things to come. T
he dollies merely waiting, under the watchful eyes of their wolfen, wolfen I see lurking in the grass nearby. Just one more empty dollie day, waiting to die in the jaws of the gods, no matter that the world is filled with crazy aliens, crazy aliens and their incomprehensible doings. No matter that the world is full of beauty.

  When I imagine myself a dollie, I wonder how they feel about the way human hunters kill their gods with lightning called down from the sky. Perhaps, just the way Moloch’s babies felt, with the coming of YHWH and his doppelgänger, Allah.

  Over by the river, to my slight surprise, were three vast, dark womfrogs, apparently having been drinking, heads now raised, looking in our direction. I want to fancy I can feel their fear. Human being up there, they think. To us, a human being is only death. How does it feel to be Death Incarnate, I wonder. I don’t like the feeling at all.

  Every now and again you hear a news story, story of how some simple wage-slave, fired, disciplined, cast aside, abandoned, returns armed to the scene of his disgrace. On that day, bosses die, and the rest of us feel a smug satisfaction, knowing they probably deserved it.

  I imagine myself a boss, riven by the thunderbolts of vengeance, crying out: It wasn’t my fault. There are other greater bosses above me. Don’t kill me please. I was only following orders.

  This feeling I have now is just like that.

  Then the Arousians were standing in front of us, looking at me with their stick-bug eyes, looking down at the Kapellmeister. Perhaps they have some inkling of why we’ve come again. The nearest of them, Rustmold-on-Pale-Snow I was pleased to remember, moved his arms in some kind of Arousian body language and said, Greekeegreekee...

  The translator box clipped to its harness made a sound like a rhinoceros ramming a truck, followed by the sound of that same truck tumbling end over end down a long, rocky defile.