by Greg Bear
“No,” Martin said.
“I think I do. We’re going to survive, Martin.”
“Good,” Martin said.
“I’ll be quiet.” She lay back and folded her hands on her stomach. Martin looked down at her from his seat against the wall.
“She’s not as pretty as Theresa,” Theodore said, standing over them. “But she’s honest. She’s resourceful. You could do a lot worse.”
“Shut up,” Martin said.
Ariel opened her eyes languidly. “Didn’t say anything.”
“Not talking to you,” Martin said, slumping until his legs bumped hers, then sidling up next to her. He reached out and hugged her. She tensed, then sighed and relaxed, turned her face toward his, looked him over from a few centimeters, eyebrows arched quizzically.
“I know I’m not as pretty as Theresa,” she whispered. Her vulnerability pricked deep beneath his lassitude.
“Shh,” he said.
“You two were good,” she said.
He patted her shoulder. “Sleep,” he said.
She snuggled closer, gripping his hand with her long fingers.
Trojan Horse ended super deceleration at ten percent light-speed. Volumetric fields lifted. They would coast for five days, then begin a more leisurely deceleration to enter the system.
The first response to their signal came on tight-beam transmission from the fourth planet, content simple enough: a close match, with subtle and interesting variations, of Hakim’s repetitive code. The first twelve prime numbers were counted out in binary.
Martin examined the message while still dazed from the constraints. Simple acknowledgement, without any commitment or welcome.
Salutary caution in a forest full of wolves. Or supreme confidence mixed with humility…
Hakim sent another message, this time with samples of human and Brother voices extending greetings, his own voice counting numbers, and a list of mathematical and physical constants.
Martin ate his lunch of soup in a squeeze bulb and a piece of cake as he looked over fresh pictures of the fourth planet. Huge and dark, touched with streamers of water vapor cloud, wide black oceans and lighter gray continents.
“When will the other ships finish super deceleration?”
“Shrike in fifty-four minutes, and Greyhound in one hour, fifty-two minutes,” Hakim said. “We can noach them now, if you wish, of course.”
“No need,” Martin said. “Let them recover first. We need time to work on our disguise. We need to rehearse.”
“Sounds like the class play,” Erin said, moving in for a closer look at the projected fourth planet.
“We’ll follow the script closely,” Martin said. He looked around the compartment, making sure the Brothers had recovered from deceleration. They took the process harder than humans and needed two hours disassembled to bring themselves out of funk.
Eye on Sky came forward, Paola at his side. He smelled of some exotic spice Martin couldn’t identify: wine and cinnamon, hot resin.
“We are ready,” Eye on Sky said.
The bridge of Double Seed took shape, Brothers and humans orchestrating the final practical and decorative touches.
The crew compartment made sleeping nets for humans and ring beds for Brothers—a series of hoops within which a braid could disassemble and the cords could hang, one or two claws attached to each ring.
Silken Parts and Paola translated the proceedings for all the Brothers.
“We’ll have four more days to rehearse,” Martin said. “Hakim and Sharp Seeing will keep track of our interchanges with whoever’s down there. We’ll have an all-crew briefing every twelve hours. If you’re not on duty, you’re free to contribute to the background. Ariel and Paola will coordinate with Scoots Fast.”
“Scoots Fast has requested a name change,” Paola said. “He wants to be called Long Slither. It’s more accurate. And more dignified.”
“Fine by me,” Martin said. He followed Hakim and Eye on Sky into the noach “inner sanctum,” a small interior compartment screened against outside examination. There was barely room for the three of them.
Eye on Sky contacted Shrike first. At the extreme edge of noach range, text messages were most reliable, and Shrike’s message was projected flat before them. Silken Parts translated the Brother text, a short row of closely spaced curved lines: “We we are safe and still joined in the giant braid. Swift work and firm sand.”
The last contact with Greyhound before entry was short and sweet as well: “In orbit and recovered,” Giacomo transmitted. “Everybody impatient. Good luck!”
“Giacomo needs to work on his poetry,” Erin said wrily. “We’re being outclassed.”
Hakim, Martin, Paola, and Eye on Sky gathered on the new-made bridge. Panels pulled back to show steady blackness, a close-packed haze of stars.
“This is very splendid,” Hakim said, touching the new bulkheads, so different in style from the moms’ usual architecture. “Like being on a ship that might have been made by humans, begging the Brothers’ pardon!”
“We we also feel that if traveled to the stars, it might have been on such a ship,” Eye on Sky said.
Hakim nodded pleasantly. “For the time being, we still use the moms’ remotes on a wide baseline, advanced eyes and ears…”
An image of the fourteenth planet, nearest to the Trojan Horse, grew before them in a small star sphere. Martin leaned forward. Mottled, cold blue and green, a gas giant fifty thousand kilometers in diameter, the fourteenth planet was surrounded by twenty-one moons, and more besides. Its mushy upper atmosphere sprouted floating platforms hundreds of kilometers in diameter, needle-like proboscises extending down through the haze to high-pressure regions below. From the center of each platform, a crystal plume of white rose through a ring that glowed bright as fire in the upper, clear atmosphere. Hyperbolic lines of plasma shot from the ring, like threads from this distance, but hot as the filament in a light-bulb.
“Gas wells,” Martin said. “Tens of thousands of them. Raising gas from the depths, packing it—somehow—accelerating it in those rings, retrieving it in orbit. Impressive.”
“They reveal matter-conversion technology right here,” Hakim said. “They do not care to hide it. No platform parts made of normal matter could survive in those depths, nor contain the gases under such conditions. We see the bottom of the fuel chain, which leads to the top—the technology of the platforms themselves.”
Eye on Sky rustled and smelled of camphor and pine.
The scene shifted to the next planet nearest to them, number twelve, half a billion kilometers closer to the star, this one a rocky world with a diameter of ten thousand kilometers. The color of the planet’s crescent—viewed in close-up—was dark brown with scattered patches of tan and white. “Resolution of about four hundred kilometers,” Hakim said. “It may be made of rock and ice. It is cold enough for ammonia and methane to lie solid on the surface, and the atmosphere appears to be mostly nitrogen and argon. There is no large-scale construction—“
Abruptly, the planet darkened as if the illuminated limb were obscured by shadow. Then, within the shadow and along the limb, thin lines of brilliant white appeared like molten silver poured over a surface of carbon soot. The lines curved into circles and ovals, scribed contours, ran straight as great circles. The density of lineation increased, thinner lines within thick, until the entire planet glowed hot silver. Just as abruptly, color returned—but a different color, with different details, grayish-tan with green patches.
Jennifer giggled abruptly, then clapped her fingers to her mouth. “Sorry,” she said.
“What in the hell was that?” George Dempsey asked.
Dumbfounded, Hakim looked between his colleagues, then read the fresh chemical analysis. “Pure argon atmosphere. The surface appears to be mostly silicates, fine sand perhaps, small rocks. The green patches are very cold, much colder than the rest of the planet—four or five kelvins.”
“I hope Giacomo saw that,” Jennifer said, face ghos
tly. She could not stop her hands from touching her shoulders, her elbows, her knees. She seemed terrified. “If Hans is looking for proof of illusion…”
“Let’s not draw conclusions yet,” Martin said.
Jennifer giggled again.
The next planet inward that shared the same quadrant of the Leviathan system, number two, orbited scarcely one hundred and fifty million kilometers from the star, barely within a “temperate” zone allowing liquid water. Pale brownish-red, lacking any thick atmosphere, this planet was lumpy with structure. Even with a diameter of over twenty-one thousand kilometers, its outline was remarkably uneven.
“They’re showing off again,” Paola said. “How tall are those…whatever they are?”
“Hundreds of kilometers tall,” Hakim said. “Tens of thousands of them. Cities, perhaps?”
“Are we getting any communications between the planets?” Jennifer asked
“No artificial radiation leakage,” Hakim said. “Except for the energies used to ship gas up from the giant planets. But even those are of a frequency easily interpreted as solar flares. From a few light months away, the system is rich with planets, but quiet.”
“So they’re not hiding, but they’re not attracting attention, either. What about commerce between the worlds?”
“It is ripe with ships like seeds in shore fruit,” Eye on Sky said. “Tens of millions of vessels rising up, falling down. Every world takes ships but the twelfth. It orbits alone. The fourth planet is most visited.”
“Can we tell if there’s any commerce not using ships?” Martin asked. “Matter transmission—something more sophisticated?”
“Not found any such signs,” Eye on Sky said. “If they are using noach, of course we we are not detecting them.”
Martin rubbed the side of his nose. “Let’s send two messages, one after the other, video with speech accompaniment, the next with Brother text/sound. Coded pictures in polar and rectangular coordinates, one hundred shades, no color, of our ship seen from outside, a Brother assembled and disassembled, and a human male and human female seen from the front, naked. Show our origins related to the three nearest stars. Our fictitious origins, of course…”
“A Voyager message,” Paola said, smiling. She explained for the Brothers. Silken Parts had already researched this small bit of human history.
When it was finished, Martin projected the message for all to see. Silken Parts and Paola quickly worked to translate it into Brother text, which Eye on Sky approved. He suggested, “Let us add full set of symbols from each written language.”
They waited twelve hours. At some six billion kilometers from Leviathan, the first response to their inquiry came from the fourth planet, ten pictures in coordinate video. The mom quickly translated and projected them, one after another.
The pictures showed five different beings. The crew examined the portraits in sequence. The first type was four-legged, slender and graceful-looking, with a long, slim neck topped by a short-nosed head with two prominent forward-facing eyes. But for a few features, it might have been a smaller, less stocky version of the Red Tree Runner sauropods. “Where are the hands?” Erin Eire asked.
Nobody answered. The second type stood upright on two thick, almost elephantine legs, with a barrel chest and a small head without apparent eyes. Two sets of arms emerged from its barrel chest, equipped with two sets of many-fingered hands.
“These are the ones who met with the Red Tree Runners,” Erin said.
“Sure looks like them,” Andrew said.
The third type seemed to be aquatic, having no legs or arms as such, elongated, shark-shaped, with wide wing-like fins along their sides, narrow, ridged pointed “heads” with no visible eyes, and fins with fingerlike extensions just behind the head. The fourth was a nightmare, a nest of tentacles or legs jointed dozens of places along each length, some tipped with smaller tentacles, others with three-part pincers. The body, dwarfed by the tentacles, was squat and dark.
The image of the fifth type brought gasps from the humans. Reptilian, with a long crested head and a short trunk, and limbs that folded backward at the lower joints, the fifth was much smaller than the preceding types.
Erin reached out to take Ariel’s hand. The humans stared in shock and disbelief.
“God damn them,” George Dempsey said.
“They don’t know where we come from,” Cham said. “They’ve screwed up royally.”
Martin nodded. Paola began to explain to Eye on Sky, but the Brother rustled and emitted a strong rosy odor of sympathy. “We we recognize,” Eye on Sky said. “This is from your endtime history.”
“We’ve found them,” Martin said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Ariel said softly.
“What other conclusions are there?” Martin asked.
“How many beings have they investigated, how many forms might they have stolen? We still can’t be positive.”
Martin wanted to bask in this sense of discovery, have the peculiar satisfaction of watching the Killers make a mistake, reveal a weakness. “I want to be positive,” he said ambiguously.
“Then think,” Ariel said, glancing nervously at the others, as if anticipating a sudden wave of emotion overriding reason. “This could be the original they stole their design from.”
“Not likely,” Martin said. “If the Killers knew them well enough to copy their…bodies, their designs, they’d be dead by now, almost surely…” He turned to the mom. “Do you recognize this type from any of the worlds the Benefactors saved, or any other worlds you know?”
“It does not match any in our records,” the mom answered.
Martin turned back to Ariel. “Any other theories?” he asked.
Ariel raised her hands. “I still think we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”
“This is the one,” Martin said. “It’s the creature they used as a decoy outside the spaceship in Death Valley. I know it is.”
Cham laid his hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Let’s say it is, for now. Doesn’t change our plans any. Just another piece of evidence.”
“Right,” Martin said, shivering off his emotion. “Noach it to Shrike and Greyhound. Noach all the pictures.”
“Let’s finish looking at them ourselves, first,” Cham suggested evenly, still patting Martin’s shoulder.
Martin pulled himself back from his anger. “Sorry,” he said.
“We all feel it, Martin,” Erin said.
“All of us,” Ariel said. She took a deep breath and squatted on the floor.
The next two pictures sketched an orbital path in relation to the fifteen planets, astrogational hints given by binary number measurements triangulating on the nearest stars.
“Very friendly. They’re suggesting we decelerate at five g’s,” Cham said, tracing his finger along the projection, “and go into orbit around the fourth planet.”
“Can we survive there?” Andrew asked.
“It is the inexplicable one,” Hakim said. “Far too light to be solid, one hundred two thousand kilometers in diameter, there is a cool, solid surface and a thin atmosphere, ten percent oxygen, seventy percent nitrogen, fifteen percent argon and other inerts, five percent carbon dioxide, about six tenths of ship’s pressure. Not good to breathe. The surface temperature is fine, a range of ten to twenty degrees centigrade. The gravitational pull is high, however, about two g’s.”
“The mom can’t wrap us in fields,” Andrew Jaguar said. “We’re not supposed to have that kind of technology.”
“We we might disassemble,” Eye on Sky warned. “With such weight, there is often no braid control over cords.”
Martin held up his hand to cut the discussion. His head hurt abominably. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, one way or another. If they treat us like guests, they’ll probably have ways to make us comfortable. If not—“He looked around the cabin. “Why worry?”
“We don’t know we’ll be invited to the surface,” Paola said.
“Not very neighborly if we aren’t,” Erin said.
“Or they might just kill us,” Andrew Jaguar said. “These worlds look like a lot of very sweet candy for curious flies.”
“Andrew,” Jennifer said testily.
“Nobody can tell me they don’t look…just very interesting! Gingerbread house and witch!”
Paola tried to explain this to the Brothers, but Eye on Sky showed with a flourish of head cords that explanation was either not needed or not wanted. No more of our violent fairy tales, Martin thought.
He turned to Eye on Sky. “Do we go in?”
“What is your opinion?” Eye on Sky rejoined. Some of the Brothers smelled of cloves.
Martin nodded. “Sure,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. Jennifer, is this diagram clear?”
“Clear enough,” she said. “Silken Parts and I can tell the ship where to go.”
Martin turned to the mom. “I assume you’ll vanish into the woodwork, so to speak, when the time comes.”
“When the time comes,” it said, “my presence will not be obvious.”
Without warning, the mom made a peculiar noise like a trumpet blat and gently toppled to one side, rebounding against the floor. The crew stared in surprise; before anyone could react, it made a similar noise and rose again, stabilized. “This vessel has been searched for high-density weapons. Examination may have been conducted by noach. My functioning was temporarily interfered with.”
“How do they search by noach?” Jennifer asked, voice squeaky.
“They may query selected atoms and particles within our vessel for their state and position.”
Jennifer looked as if she had just opened a wonderful Christmas present, and she turned to Martin, gleeful, clearly believing that her work and theory had been confirmed.
Martin was struck by how much they acted and sounded like eager, frightened children, himself included.
“Will they know the ship has a fake matter core?” he asked the mom. “Could they know you’re here?”
“Unless I am mistaken, which is possible but not likely, such a noach examination can only reveal extremes of mass density.”
Jennifer slapped her right hand against her thigh; it was obvious she wanted to do more momerath and plug in these new clues.