Beyond the Rift

by Peter Watts

  A patch of stars disappeared before my eyes.

  The manual controls were still unfamiliar. It took precious seconds to call up the right numbers. Whatever eclipsed the stars was preceding Zombie on a sunwards course, decelerating fast. One figure refused to settle; the mass of the object was increasing as I watched. Which meant that it was coming through from somewhere else.

  Kali was cutting her search time with each iteration.

  Two thousand kilometres ahead, twisted branches turned to face me across the ether. One of them sprouted an incandescent bud.

  Zombie’s sensors reported the incoming missile to the onboard; the brainchips behind my dash asked for an impact projection. The onboard chittered mindlessly.

  I stared at the approaching thunderbolt. What do want with me? Why can’t you just leave me alone?

  Of course I didn’t wait for an answer. I jumped.

  My creators left me a tool for this sort of situation: fear, they called it.

  They didn’t leave much else. None of the parasitic nucleotides that gather like dust whenever blind stupid evolution has its way, for example. None of the genes that build genitals; what would have been the point? They left me a sex drive, but they tweaked it; the things that get me off are more tightly linked to mission profiles than to anything so vulgar as procreation. I retain a smattering of chemical sexuality, mostly androgens so I won’t easily take no for an answer.

  There are genetic sequences, long and intricately folded, which code for loneliness. Thigmotactic hardwiring, tactile pleasure, pheromonal receptors that draw the individual into social groups. All gone from me. They even tried to cut religion out of the mix but God, it turns out, is borne of fear. The loci are easy enough to pinpoint but the linkages are absolute: you can’t exorcise faith without eliminating pure mammalian terror as well. And out here, they decided, fear was too vital a survival mechanism to leave behind.

  So fear is what they left me with. Fear, and superstition. And try as I might to keep my midbrain under control, the circuitry down there kept urging me to grovel and abase itself before the omnipotence of the Great Killer God.

  I almost envied Zombie as she dropped me into another impermanent refuge. Zombie moved on reflex alone, brain-dead, galvanic. She didn’t know enough to be terrified.

  For that matter, I didn’t know much more.

  What was Kali’s problem, anyway? Was its captain insane, or merely misunderstood? Was I being hunted by something innately evil, or just the product of an unhappy childhood?

  Any intelligence capable of advanced spaceflight must also be able to understand peaceful motives; such was the wisdom of Human sociologists. Most had never left the solar system. None had actually encountered an alien. No matter. The logic seemed sound enough; any species incapable of controlling their aggression probably wouldn’t survive long enough to escape their own system. The things that made me nearly didn’t.

  Indiscriminate hostility against anything that moves is not an evolutionary strategy that makes sense.

  Maybe I’d violated some cultural taboo. Perhaps an alien captain had gone insane. Or perhaps I’d chanced upon a battleship engaged in some ongoing war, wary of doomsday weapons in sheep’s clothing.

  But what were the odds, really? In all the universe, what are the chances that our first encounter with another intelligence would happen to involve an alien lunatic? How many interstellar wars would have to be going on simultaneously before I ran significant odds of blundering into one at random?

  It almost made more sense to believe in God.

  I searched for another answer that fitted. I was still looking two hours later, when Kali bounced my signal from only a thousand kilometres off.

  Somewhere else in space, the question and I appeared at the same time: Is everyone out here like this?

  Assuming that I wasn’t dealing with a statistical fluke—that I hadn’t just happened to encounter one psychotic alien amongst a trillion sane ones, and that I hadn’t blundered into the midst of some unlikely galactic war—there was one other alternative.

  Kali was typical.

  I put the thought aside long enough to check the Systems monitor; nearly two hours, this time, before I could jump again. Zombie was deeply interstellar, over six lightyears from the nearest system. Even I couldn’t justify kicking in the thrusters at that range. Nothing to do but wait, and wonder—

  Kali couldn’t be typical. It made no sense. Maybe this was all just some fantastic cross-cultural miscommunication. Maybe Kali had mistaken my own transmission as some kind of attack, and responded in kind.

  Right. An intelligence smart enough to rape my onboard in a matter of hours, yet too stupid to grasp signals expressly designed to be decipherable by anyone. Kali hadn’t needed prime number sequences or pictograms to understand me or my overtures. It knew Zombie’s mind from the qubits up. It knew that I was friendly, too. It had to know.

  It just didn’t care.

  And barely ten minutes past the jump threshold, it finally caught up with me.

  I could feel space rippling almost before the short-range board lit up. My inner ears split into a dozen fragments, each insisting up was a different direction. At first I thought Zombie was jumping by herself; then I thought the onboard gravity was failing somehow.

  Then Kali began materialising less than a hundred meters away. I was caught in her wake.

  I moved without thinking. Zombie spun on her axis and leapt away under full thrust. Telltales sparkled in crimson protest. Behind me, the plasma cone of Zombie’s exhaust splashed harmlessly against the resolving monster.

  Still wanting for solid substance, Kali turned to follow. Her malformed arms, solidifying, reached out for me.

  It’s going to grapple, I realised. Something subcortical screamed Jump!

  Too close. I’d drag Kali through with me if I tried.

  Jump!

  Eight hundred meters between us. At that range my exhaust should have been melting it to ions.

  Six hundred meters. Kali was whole again.

  JUMP!

  I jumped. Zombie leapt blindly out of space. For one sickening moment, geometry died. Then the vortex spat me out.

  But not alone.

  We came through together. Cat and mouse dropped into reality four hundred meters apart, coasting at about one-thousandth c. The momentum vectors didn’t quite match; within ten seconds Kali was over a hundred kilometres away.

  Then you destroyed her.

  It took some time to figure that out. All I saw was the flash, so bright it nearly overwhelmed the filters; then the cooling shell of hydrogen that crested over me and dissipated into a beautiful, empty sky.

  I couldn’t believe that I was free.

  I tried to imagine what might have caused Kali’s destruction. Engine malfunction? Sabotage or mutiny on board, for reasons I could never even guess at? Ritual suicide?

  Until I played back the flight recorder, it never occurred to me that she might have been hit by a missile travelling at half the speed of light.

  That frightened me more than Kali had. The short-range board gave me a clear view to five AUs, and there was nothing in any direction. Whatever had destroyed her must have come from a greater distance. It must have been en route before we’d even come through.

  It had been expecting us.

  I almost missed Kali in that moment. At least she hadn’t been invisible. At least she hadn’t been able to see the future.

  There was no way of knowing whether the missile had been meant for my pursuer, or for me, or for anything else that wandered by. Was I alive because you didn’t want me dead, or because you thought I was dead already? And if my presence went undetected now, what might give me away? Engine emissions, RF, perhaps some exotic property of advanced technology which my species has yet to discover? What did your weapons key on?

  I couldn’t afford to find out. I shut everything down to bare subsistence, and played dead, and watched.

  I’ve been here f
or many days now. At last, things are becoming clear.

  Mysterious contacts wander space at the limit of Zombie ’s instruments, following cryptic trails. I have coasted through strands of invisible energy that defy analysis. There is also much background radiation here, of the sort Kali bled when she died. I have recorded the light of many fusion explosions: some lighthours distant, some less than a hundred thousand kilometres away.

  Occasionally, such things happen at close range.

  Strange artefacts appear in the paths of missiles sent from some source too distant to see. Almost always they are destroyed; but once, before your missiles reached it, a featureless sphere split into fragments which danced away like dust motes. Only a few of them fell victim to your appetite that time. And once, something that shimmered, as wide and formless as an ocean, took a direct hit without disappearing. It limped out of range at less than the speed of light, and you did not send anything to finish the job.

  There are things in this universe that even you cannot destroy.

  I know what this is. I am caught in a spiderweb. You snatch ships from their travels and deposit them here to face annihilation. I don’t know how far you can reach. This is a very small volume of space, perhaps only two or three lightdays across. So many ships couldn’t blunder across such a tiny reef by accident; you must be bringing them from a much greater distance. I don’t know how. Any singularity big enough to manage such a feat would show up on my instruments a hundred lightyears away, and I can find nothing. It doesn’t matter anyway, now that I know what you are.

  You’re Kali, but much greater. And only now do you make sense to me.

  I’ve stopped trying to reconcile the wisdom of Earthbound experts with the reality I have encountered. The old paradigms are useless. I propose a new one: technology implies belligerence.

  Tools exist for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treat nature as an enemy, they are by definition a rebellion against the way things are. In benign environments technology is a stunted, laughable thing, it can’t thrive in cultures gripped by belief in natural harmony. What need of fusion reactors if food is already abundant, the climate comfortable? Why force change upon a world which poses no danger?

  Back where I come from, some peoples barely developed stone tools. Some achieved agriculture. Others were not content until they had ended nature itself, and still others until they’d built cities in space.

  All rested, eventually. Their technology climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—and so they do not stand before you now. Now even my creators grow fat and slow. Their environment mastered, their enemies broken, they can afford more pacifist luxuries. Their machines softened the universe for them, their own contentment robs them of incentive. They forget that hostility and technology climb the cultural ladder together, they forget that it’s not enough to be smart.

  You also have to be mean.

  You did not rest. What hellish world did you come from, that drove you to such technological heights? Somewhere near the core, perhaps: stars and black holes jammed cheek to jowl, tidal maelstroms, endless planetary bombardment by comets and asteroids. Some place where no one can pretend that life and war aren’t synonyms. How far you’ve come.

  My creators would call you barbarians, of course. They know nothing. They don’t even know me: I’m a recombinant puppet, they say. My solitary contentment is preordained, my choices all imaginary, automatic. Pitiable.

  Uncomprehending, even of their own creations. How could they possibly understand you?

  But I understand. And understanding, I can act.

  I can’t escape you. I’d die of old age before I drifted out of this abattoir on my current trajectory. Nor can I jump free, given your ability to snare ships exceeding lightspeed. There’s only one course that may keep me alive.

  I’ve traced back along the paths of the missiles you throw; they converge on a point a little less than three lightdays ahead. I know where you are.

  We’re centuries behind you now, but that may change. Even your progress won’t be endless; and the more of a threat you pose to the rest of us, the more you spur our own advancement. Was that how you achieved your own exalted stature out here? Did you depose some earlier killer god whose attempts at eradication only made you stronger? Do you fear such a fate for yourselves?

  Of course you do.

  Even my masters may pose a threat, given time; they’ll shake off their lethargy the moment they realise that you exist. You can rid yourself of that threat if you exterminate them while they are still weak. To do that, you need to know where they are.

  Don’t think you can kill me and learn what you need from my ship. I’ve destroyed any records that survived Kali’s assault; there weren’t many. And I doubt that even you could deduce much from Zombie’s metallurgical makeup; my creators evolved under a very common type of star. You have no idea where I come from.

  But I do.

  My ship can tell you some of the technology. Only I can tell you where the nest is. And more than that; I can tell you of the myriad systems that Humanity has explored and colonised. I can tell you all about those pampered children of the womb who sent me into the maelstrom on their behalf. You’ll learn little of them by examining me, for I was built to differ from the norm.

  But you could always listen to me. You have nothing to lose.

  I will betray them. Not because I bear them any ill will, but because the ethics of loyalty simply don’t apply out here. I’m free of the ties that cloud the judgement of lesser creatures; when you’re a sterile product of controlled genetics, kin selection is a meaningless phrase.

  My survival imperative, on the other hand, is as strong as anyone’s. Not automatic after all, you see. Autonomous.

  I assume that you can understand this transmission. I’m sending it repeatedly in half-second bursts while thrusting. Wait for me; hold your fire.

  I’m worth more to you alive.

  Ready or not, here I come.

  HILLCREST V. VELIKOVSKY

  The facts of the case were straightforward. Lacey Hillcrest of Pensacola, fifty years old and a devout Pentecostal, had been diagnosed with inoperable lymphatic cancer and given six months to live. Five years later she was still alive, albeit frail. She attributed her survival to a decorative silver-plated cross received from her sister, Gracey Balfour. Witnesses attested that Mrs. Hillcrest’s condition improved dramatically upon acquisition of the totem, a product of the Graceland Mint alleged to contain an embedded fragment of the original Crucifix of Golgotha.

  On the morning of June 27, Mrs. Hillcrest and her sister patronised The Museum of Quackery and Pseudoscience, owned and managed by one Linus C. Velikovsky. The museum contained a variety of displays concerning discredited beliefs, theories, and outright hoaxes perpetrated throughout American history. Mrs. Balfour entered into a heated discussion with another museum patron at the Intelligent Design exhibit, temporarily losing track of her sister; they eventually reconnected at a display concerning psychosomatic phenomena, specifically placebo effects and faith healing. Mrs. Hillcrest had evidently spent some time perusing the display and was subsequently described as “subdued and uncommunicative.” Within a month she was dead.

  The charge against Mr. Velikovsky was negligent homicide.

  The Prosecution called Dr. Andrew deTritus, a clinical psychologist with an impressive record of expert testimony on any (and sometimes conflicting) sides of a given issue. Dr. deTritus testified to the uncontested reality of the placebo effect, pointing out that “attitude” and “outlook”—like any other epiphenomenon—were ultimately electrochemical in nature. Belief literally rewired the brain, and the existence of placebo effects showed that such changes could have a real impact on human health.

  Velikovsky took the stand in his own defence, which was straightforward: all claims presented by his displays were factually accurate and supported by scientific evidence. The prosecution objected to this point on the grounds of
relevance but was, after some discussion, overruled.

  Far from disputing Velikovsky’s claims during cross-examination, however, the Prosecution used them to bolster its own case. The defendant had deliberately set up shop in “one of our great country’s most devout regions, with no thought to the welfare of the Lacey Hillcrests of the world.” By his own admission, Mr. Velikovsky had chosen Florida “because of all the creation museums,” and had clearly been intent on rubbing people’s noses in the alleged falsity of their beliefs. Furthermore, Mr. Velikovsky was obviously well-versed in placebo effects, having built an erudite display on the subject. What did he think would happen, the Prosecution thundered, when he forced his so-called truth down the throat of someone whose motto—knitted into her favourite throw-cushion—was If ye have faith the size of a mustard seed, ye shall move mountains? In telling “the truth” Velikovsky had knowingly and recklessly endangered the very life of another human being.

  Velikovsky pointed out that he hadn’t even known Lacey Hillcrest existed, adding that needlepointing something onto a pillowcase did not necessarily make it true. The Prosecution responded that the man who plants land mines in a playground doesn’t know the names of his victims either, and asked if the defendant’s needlepoint remark meant that he was now calling Jesus a liar.

  The Defence objected repeatedly throughout.

  The Defence had, in fact, fought an uphill battle ever since her client’s swearing-in, during which Velikovsky had asked whether swearing to tell the truth on “a book of falsehoods” might undermine the court’s alleged devotion to empiricism. The jury had seemed unimpressed by that question, and did not appear to have subsequently become more sympathetic.

  Perhaps, if worst came to worst, their verdict might be set aside on technical grounds. But the closest thing to a precedent the Defence could unearth was Dexter v. HerpBGone, involving a mail-order scheme in which a mixture of sugar and baking soda had been marketed as a cure for herpes at $200/treatment. Although this “cure” had (unsurprisingly) proven ineffective, HerpBGone’s council had cited Waber et al 20081—which clearly showed that a placebo’s efficacy increased with price—arguing that the treatment could have worked if Dexter had only paid more for it. As he had refused to do so (the same product was sold under a different name at $4,000), responsibility devolved to the plaintiff. The case had been dismissed.