AI Unbound

by Nancy Kress

  He put out his hand to touch it, and the hand stopped nearly a foot away.

  “Jim!” Ann called, and somebody else—must be Kleinschmidt—said, “Herr Dr. Cowell!” Cowell moved his hand along whatever he was touching. An invisible wall, or maybe some sort of hard field, encased the craft.

  “Hello, ship,” he said softly, and afterward wasn’t ever sure if he’d said it aloud.

  “Don’t touch it! Wait!” Ann called, and her hand snatched away his.

  It didn’t matter. He turned to her, not really seeing her, and said something that, like his greeting to the ship, he wasn’t ever sure about afterward. “I was raised Orthodox, you know. Waiting for the Messiah,” and then the rest were on them, with helicopters pulsing overhead and soldiers ordering everyone back, back I said! And Cowell was pushed into the crowd with no choice except to set himself to wait for the visitors to come out.

  “Are you absolutely positive?” the president, who was given to superlatives, asked his military scientists. He had assembled them, along with the joint chiefs of staff, the cabinet, the Canadian lieutenant-governor, and a sprinkling of advisors, in the cabinet room of the White House. The same group had been meeting daily for a week, ever since the object had landed. Washington was warmer than Minnesota; outside, dahlias and chrysanthemums still bloomed on the manicured lawn. “No signal of any type issued from the craft, at any time after you picked it up on the Hubble?”

  The scientists looked uncomfortable. It was the kind of question only non-scientists asked. Before his political career, the president had been a financier.

  “Sir, we can’t say for certain that we know all types of signals that could or do exist. Or that we had comprehensive, fixed-position monitoring of the craft at all times. As you—”

  “All right, all right. Since it landed, then, and you got your equipment trained on it. No radio signals emanating from it, at any wavelength whatsoever?”

  “No, sir. That’s definite.”

  “No light signals, even in infrared or ultraviolet?”

  “No, Mr. President.”

  “No gamma lengths, or other radioactivity?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No quantum effects?” the president said, surprising everyone. He was not noted for his wide reading.

  “Do you mean things like quantum entanglement to transport information?” the head of Livermore National Laboratory said cautiously. “Of course, we don’t know enough about that area of physics to predict for certain what may be discovered eventually, or what a race of beings more advanced than ours might have discovered already.”

  “So there might be quantum signals going out from the craft constantly, for all you know.”

  The Livermore director spread his hands in helpless appeal. “Sir, we can only monitor signals we already understand.”

  The president addressed his chief military advisor, General Dayton. “This shield covering the craft—you don’t understand that, either? What kind of field it is, why nothing at all gets through except light?”

  “Everything except electromagnetic radiation in the visible-light wavelengths is simply reflected back at us,” Dayton said.

  “So you can’t use sonar, X-rays, anything that could image the inside?”

  This time Dayton didn’t answer. The president already knew all this. The whole world knew it. The best scientific and military minds from several nations had been at work on the object all week.

  “So what is your recommendation to me?” the president said.

  “Sir, our only recommendation is that we continue full monitoring of the craft, with full preparation to meet any change in its behavior.”

  “In other words, ‘Wait and see.’ I could have decided that for myself, without all you high-priced talent!” the president said in disgust, and several people in the room reflected with satisfaction that this particular president had only a year and three months left in office. There was no way he would be re-elected. The economy had taken too sharp a downturn.

  Unless, of course, a miracle happened to save him.

  “Well, go back to your labs, then,” the president said, and even though he knew it was a mistake, the director of Livermore gave in to impulse.

  “Science can’t always be a savior, Mr. President.”

  “Then what good is it?” the president said, with a puzzled simplicity that took the director’s breath away. “Just keep a close eye on that craft. And try to come up with some actual scientific data, for a blessed change.”

  ALIEN FIELD MAY BE FORM OF BOSE-EINSTEIN

  CONDENSATE, SAY SCIENTISTS AT STANFORD

  NOBEL PRIZE WINNER RIDICULES STANFORD STATEMENT

  MINNESOTA STATE COURT THROWS OUT CASE CLAIMING CONTAMINATED GROUND WATER NEAR ALIEN OBJECT

  SPACE SHIELD MAY BE PENETRATED BY UNDETECTED

  COSMIC RAYS, SAYS FRENCH SCIENTIST

  SPACE-OBJECT T-SHIRTS RULED OBSCENE BY LOCAL

  TOURIST COUNCIL, REMOVED FROM VENDOR STANDS

  NEUTRINO STREAM TURNED BACK FROM

  SPACE SHIELD IN EXPENSIVE HIGH-TECH FIASCO:

  Congress to Review All Peer-Judged Science Funding

  WOMAN CLAIMS UNDER HYPNOSIS TO HEAR VOICES FROM SPACE OBJECT—KENT STATE SCIENTISTS INVESTIGATING

  PRESIDENT LOSES ELECTION BY

  LARGEST MARGIN EVER

  “MY TWIN SONS WERE FATHERED BY THE OBJECT,” CLAIMS SENATOR’S DAUGHTER, RESISTS DNA TESTING

  Polls Show 46% of Americans Believe Her

  Jim Cowell, contemptuous of the senator’s daughter, was forced to acknowledge that he had waited a lifetime for his own irrational belief to be justified. Which it never had.

  “Just a little farther, Dad,” Barbara said. “You okay?”

  Cowell nodded in his wheelchair, and slowed it to match Barbara’s pace. She wheezed a little these days; losing weight wouldn’t hurt her. He had learned over the years not to mention this. Ahead, the last checkpoint materialized out of the fog. A bored soldier leaned out of the low window, his face lit by the glow of a holoscreen. “Yes?”

  “We have authorization to approach the object,” Cowell said. He could never think of it as anything else, despite all the names the tabloid press had hung on it over the last decades. The Alien Invader. The Space Fizzle. Silent Alien Cal.

  “Approach for retina scan,” the soldier said. Cowell wheeled his chair to the checker, leaned in close. “Okay, you’re cleared. Ma’am?…Okay. Proceed.” The soldier stuck his head back in the window, and the screen made one of the elaborate noises that accompanied the latest hologame.

  Barbara muttered, “As if he knew the value of what he’s guarding!”

  “He knows,” Cowell said. He didn’t really want to talk to Barbara. Much as he loved her, he really would have preferred to come to this place alone. Or with Sharon, if Sharon had still been alive. But Barbara had been afraid he might have some sort of final attack alone there by the object, and of course he might have. He was pretty close to the end, and they both knew it. Getting here from Detroit was taking everything Cowell had left.

  He wheeled down the paved path. On either side, autumn stubble glinted with frost. They were almost on the object before it materialized out of the fog.

  Barbara began to babble. “Oh, it looks so different from pictures, even holos, so much smaller but shinier, too, you never told me it was so shiny, Dad, I guess whatever it’s made of doesn’t rust. But, no, of course the air isn’t getting close enough to rust it, is it, there’s that shield to prevent oxidation, and they never found out what that is composed of, either, did they, although I remember reading this speculative article that—”

  Cowell shut her out as best he could. He brought his chair close enough to touch the shield. Still nothing: no tingle, no humming, no moving. Nothing at all.

  That first time rushed back to him, in sharp sensory detail. The fatigue, the strain, the rustle of corn husks in the unseen wind. Hans Kleinschmidt’s Styrofoam cup of coffee warm in Cowell
’s hand. Ann Pettie’s cry It’s landing here! Run! Cowell’s own strange personal feeling of inevitability: Of course. They wouldn’t let me miss this.

  Well, they had. They’d let the whole world miss whatever the hell the object was supposed to be, or do, or represent. Hans was long dead. Ann was institutionalized with Alzheimer’s. “Hello, ship.” And the rest of his life—of many people’s lives—devoted to trying to figure out the Space Super Fizzle.

  That long frustration, Cowell thought, had showed him one thing, anyway. There was no mystery behind the mystery, no unseen Plan, no alien messiah for humanity. There was only this blank object sitting in a field, stared at by a shrill middle-aged woman and a dying man. What you see is what you get. He, James Everett Cowell, had been a fool to ever hope for anything else.

  “Dad, why are you smiling like that? Don’t, please!”

  “It’s nothing, Barbara.”

  “But you looked—”

  “I said, ‘It’s nothing.’ ”

  Suddenly he was very tired. It was cold out here, under the gray sky. Snow was in the air.

  “Honey, let’s go back now.”

  They did, Barbara walking close by Cowell’s chair. He didn’t look back at the object, silent on the fallow ground.

  Transmission: There is nothing here yet.

  Current probability of occurrence: 67%.

  II: 2090

  The girl, dressed in home-dyed blue cotton pants and a wolf pelt bandeau, said suddenly, “Tam—what’s that?”

  Tam Wilkinson stopped walking, although his goat herd did not. The animals moved slowly forward, pulling at whatever tough grass they could find on the parched ground. Three-legged Himmie hobbled close to the herd leader; blind Jimmie turned his head in the direction of Himmie’s bawl. “What’s what?” the boy said.

  “Over there, to the north…no, there.”

  The boy shaded his eyes against the summer sun, hot under the thin clouds. He and Juli would have to find noon shade for the goats soon. Tam’s eyes weren’t strong, but by squinting and peering, he caught the glint of sunlight on something dull silvery. “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s go see.”

  Tam looked bleakly at Juli. They had married only a few months ago, in the spring. She was so pretty, hardly any deformity at all. The doctor from St. Paul had issued her a fertility certificate at only fourteen. But she was impulsive. Tam, three years older, came from a family unbroken since the Collapse. They hadn’t accomplished that by impulsive behavior.

  “No, Juli. We have to find shade for the goats.”

  “It could be shade. O, or even a machine with some good metal on it!”

  “This whole area was stripped long ago.”

  “Maybe they missed something.”

  Tam considered. She could be right; since their marriage, he and Juli had brought the goats pretty far beyond their usual range. Not many people had ventured into the Great Northern Waste for pasturage. The whole area had been too hard hit at the Collapse, leaving the soil too contaminated and the standing water even worse. But the summer had been unusually rainy, creating the running water that was so much safer than ponds or lakes, and anyway Tam and Juli had delighted in being alone. Maybe there was a forgotten machine with usable parts still sitting way out here, from before the Collapse. What a great thing to bring home from his honeymoon!

  “Please,” Juli said, nibbling his ear, and Tam gave in. She was so pretty. In Tam’s entire family, no women were as pretty, nor as nearly whole, as Juli. His sister Nan was loose-brained, Calie had only one arm, Jen was blind, and Suze could not walk. Only Jen was fertile, even though the Wilkinson farm was near neither lake nor city. The farm still sat in the path of the west winds coming from Grand Forks. When there had been a Grand Forks.

  Tam and Juli walked slowly, herding the goats, toward the glinting metal. The sun glared pitilessly by the time they reached the object, but the thing, whatever it was, stood beside a stand of scrawny trees in a little dell. Tam drove the goats into the shade. His practiced eye saw that once there had been water here, but no longer. They would have to move on by early afternoon.

  When the goats were settled, the lovers walked hand-in-hand toward the object. “O,” Juli said, “it’s an egg! A metal egg!” Suddenly she clutched Tam’s arm. “Is it…do you think it’s a polluter?”

  Tam felt growing excitement. “No—I know what this is! Gran told me, before she died!”

  “It’s not a polluter?”

  “No, it…well, actually, nobody knows exactly what it’s made of. But it’s safe, dear love. It’s a miracle.”

  “A what?” Juli said.

  “A miracle.” He tried not to sound superior; Juli was sensitive about her lack of education. Tam was teaching her to read and write. “A gift directly from God. A long time ago—a few hundred years, I think, anyway before the Collapse—this egg fell out of the sky. No one could figure out why. Then one day a beautiful princess touched it, and she got pregnant and bore twin sons.”

  “Really?” Juli breathed. She ran a few steps forward, then considerately slowed for Tam’s halting walk. “What happened then?”

  Tam shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. The Collapse happened.”

  “So this egg, it just sat here since then? Come on, sweet one, I want to see it up close. It just sat here? When women try so hard, us, to get pregnant?”

  The boy didn’t like the skeptical tone in her voice. He was the one with the educated family. “You don’t understand, Juli. This thing didn’t make everybody pregnant, just that one princess. It was a special miracle from God.”

  “I thought you told me that before the Collapse, nobody needed no miracles to get pregnant, because there wasn’t no pollutants in the water and air and ground?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So then when this princess got herself pregnant, why was it such a miracle?”

  “Because she was a virgin, loose-brain!” After a minute he added, “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m going to look at the egg,” Juli said stiffly, and this time she ran ahead without waiting.

  When Tam caught up, Juli was sitting cross-legged in prayer in front of the egg. It was smaller than he had expected, no bigger than a goat shed, a slightly irregular oval of dull silver. Around it the ground shimmered with heat. Minnesota hadn’t always been so hot, Gran had told Tam in her papery old-lady voice, and he suddenly wondered what this place had looked like when the egg fell out of the sky.

  Could it be a polluter? It didn’t look like it manufactured anything, and certainly Tam couldn’t see any plastic parts to it. Nothing that could flake off in bits too tiny to see and get into the air and water and wind and living bodies. Still, if they were so very small, these dangerous pieces of plastic…“endocrine mimickers,” Gran had taught Tam to call them, though he had no idea what the words meant. Doctors in St. Paul knew, probably. Although what good was knowing, if you couldn’t fix the problem and make all babies as whole as Juli?

  She sat saying her prayer beads so fervently that Tam was annoyed with her all over again. Really, she just wasn’t steady. Playful, then angry, then prayerful…she’d better be more reliable than that when the babies started to come. But then Juli raised her eyes to him, lake-blue, and appealed to his greater knowledge, and he softened again.

  “Tam…do you think it’s all right to pray to it? Since it did come from God?”

  “I’m sure it’s all right, honey. What are you praying for?”

  “Twin sons, like the princess got.” Juli scrambled to her feet. “Can I touch it?”

  Tam felt sudden fear. “No! No—better not. I will, instead.” When those twin sons came, he wanted them to be of his seed, not the egg’s.

  Cautiously the boy put out one hand, which stopped nearly a foot away from the silvery shell. Tam pushed harder. He couldn’t get any closer to the egg. “It’s got an invisible wall around it!”

  “Really? Then can I touch it? It’s not really touching the egg!”


  “No! The wall is all the princess must have touched, too.”

  “Maybe the wall, it wasn’t there a long time ago. Maybe it grew, like crops.”

  Tam frowned, torn between pride and irritation at her quick thought. “Don’t touch it, Juli. After all, for all we know, you might already be pregnant.”

  She obeyed, stepping back and studying the object. Suddenly her pretty face lit up. “Tam! Maybe it’s a miracle for us, too! For the whole family!”

  “The whole—”

  “For Nan and Calie and Suze! And your cousins, too! O, if they come here and touch the egg—or the egg wall—maybe they can get pregnant like the princess did, straight from God!”

  “I don’t think—”

  “If we came back before winter, in easy stages, and knowing ahead of time where the water was, they could all get pregnant! You could talk them into it, dear heart! You’re the only one they listen to, even your parents. The only one who can make plans and carry out them plans. You know you are.”

  She looked at him with adoration. Tam felt something inside him glow and expand. And O, she really was quick, even if she couldn’t read or write. His parents were old, at least forty, and they’d never been as quick as Tam. That was why Gran had taught him so much directly, all sorts of things she’d learned from her grandmother, who could remember the Collapse.

  He said, with slow weightiness, “If the workers in the family stayed to raise crops, we could bring the goats and the infertile women…in easy stages, I think, before fall. Provided we map ahead of time where the safe water is.”

  “O, I know you can!”

  Tam frowned thoughtfully, and reached out again to touch the silent, unreachable egg.

  Just before the small expedition left the Wilkinson farm, Dr. Sutter showed up on his dirt bike.

  Why did he have to come now? Tam didn’t like Dr. Sutter, who always acted so superior. He biked around the farms and villages, supposedly “helping people”—O, he did help some people, maybe, but not Tam’s family, who were their village. Not really helped. O, he’d brought drugs for Gran’s aching bones, and for Suze’s fever, from the hospital in St. Paul. But he hadn’t been able to stop Tam’s sisters—or anybody else—from being born the way they were, and not all his “medical training” could make Suze or Nan or Calie fertile. And Dr. Sutter lorded it over Tam, who otherwise was the smartest person in the family.