Cauldron

by Jack McDevitt

  “Like a cosmic symphony,” said Hutch.

  “Do you still believe that?”

  She was surprised that Jon knew about her speculation that the omegas were intended to be a work of art. “Yes,” she said. “It’s a possibility. If there were a colony of critters doing that, I don’t think it could be coordinated the way it is.”

  “It could be something else,” said Jon. “Other than a symphony.”

  “Like what?”

  “A message.”

  Hutch thought about it. Tried to make sense of it. “I don’t think I follow.”

  “Look at the display.”

  Patches of light were still blinking on and off. “What’s your point?”

  “Look closer.”

  There were several luminous patches in the immediate area of the eye. Four, in fact. They were blinking in sync. On for a couple seconds. And off. On for a couple seconds. And off. Then it stopped.

  And started again.

  “Antonio,” she said, “I’d like to go back. Get a little closer.”

  He wasn’t happy about that, and he let her see. Made a pained expression. Pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and wiped his lips against it. “You want to give this thing a clear shot at us, is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Hold on,” said Matt. “I don’t think that’s very smart.”

  “You wait where you are, Matt. Keep a respectful distance. We’re going to go ahead. Before we change our minds.”

  THE CONTROL SYSTEM included a musical tone, a few notes from a pop hit of the period, that the AI could use if she wanted to speak to the pilot privately. The notes sounded.

  Hutch frowned.

  “What was that?” Antonio asked.

  “Report from Phyl,” she said. “Technical stuff.” Then, casually, she pointed at her cup. “Antonio, would you mind getting me some fresh coffee? And maybe some chocolate to go with it.”

  “You hungry already?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  He climbed out of his seat. “Okay. Back in a minute.”

  Hutch turned off the speaker and pulled on earphones. “What is it, Phyl?”

  “Matt wants to talk to you.”

  Oh, Lord. “Put him through.”

  A pause, a change in tone, and Matt’s voice: “Hutch?”

  “What is it, Matt?”

  “Can Antonio hear me?”

  “No. But he’ll be back in a minute or so.”

  “Okay. Listen, I think this is a seriously bad idea. You’ve got a good chance of getting yourself killed.”

  “I know there’s a risk.”

  “We’ve already lost Rudy. I don’t want to lose anybody else.”

  The cloud was getting bigger. “Neither do I, Matt.” She tapped her fingertips on the control console. “Matt—”

  “You’re putting Antonio at risk, too.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not supposed to do that, Priscilla. He’s your passenger. His safety is supposed to be paramount.”

  “Matt, he understands what the risks are.”

  “Does he really? Do you?” For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then he sighed. “I guess it would take more courage to change your mind than to persist.”

  “That hurts, Matt.”

  “Good. I hope it’s the worst thing that happens to you over there.”

  IT WAS AN eye.

  The bridge was sealed. The viewports were blocked by the radiation shields, so she couldn’t really see it. On-screen, it was just an eye in a bank of mist. An eye that seemed to be aware of her presence in the ship. That looked out of the screen directly at her.

  She maneuvered the Preston to within a few kilometers of the cloud wall, circling so that, when she arrived in front of the eye, she would be parallel to the cloud. If she had to get out of there, she didn’t want to have to turn around first like last time. “Careful,” said Antonio in a whisper.

  It was hard to know how deep within the mist the apparition was. “Phyl, do you pick up anything solid in there?”

  “Only the eye,” she said.

  “You don’t think we could open the viewport covers? Just for a moment?”

  “It would be too dangerous, Priscilla. In fact, this entire business strikes me as being imprudent.”

  “Thanks, Phyl.”

  “I’m not comfortable,” she added.

  “I think we’ll be okay, Phyl.”

  “I have a life, too, you know.”

  The other lights in the wall, the flickering luminosities, the lightning, faded. The cloud went dark. Stayed dark. Hutch switched her navigation lamps on, but directed them away from the eye. Let’s not be impolite.

  It focused on the lights. “No question about it,” said Antonio. “I’d thought maybe it was our imagination, but that thing is watching us.”

  “Let’s see what happens when we move,” she said. Gently, she eased the ship forward. The eye tracked them.

  “That’s deceptive,” he said. “It might be like one of those drawings where the subject watches you no matter where you go in the room.”

  “It’s possible.”

  Antonio nodded, agreeing with his own analysis. He hung tightly on to his chair. Started to say something, but stopped. His voice was giving him trouble.

  Hutch understood completely. She fought down an impulse to take off. She stopped the forward progress, and used the attitude thrusters to back up. The eye stayed with them.

  When she drew abreast of it, a luminous patch appeared. Off to one side of the eye.

  “Phyl, are you reading anything?”

  “Slight energy uptick.”

  The patch expanded. Grew brighter.

  Matt was on the circuit again: “You’re too close to it, Hutch. Back off.”

  “Relax, Matthew,” she said. “We’re okay.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  Hutch never liked uh-ohs. “What is it, Matt?”

  “We’ve got another one.”

  “Another light?”

  “Another eye.”

  “Where?”

  “Same area.”

  “I see it,” said Phyl.

  It was of similar dimensions, several kilometers farther along the wall. It, too, watched the Preston.

  “There are two of them,” said Jon.

  He meant entities. The positioning of the eyes wasn’t symmetrical. However big the thing might be, they were not part of the same head.

  The luminous patch went dark.

  Navigation lamps were normally handled routinely by the AI. But Hutch had a set of manual controls. She shut the lamps off. Left them a few seconds. And turned them back on.

  The patch reappeared.

  And went off.

  “Hello,” said Hutch.

  The navigation lamps on interstellars consisted of a base set: a red strobe on the highest part of the after section, a steady red light to port, a green light to starboard, and a white light aft.

  She turned them on again. Counted to four. Switched them off. Counted to four. Turned them back on.

  Waited.

  “Hutch.” Matt sounded almost frantic in that low-key professional manner that pilots cultivate. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to talk to it.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Matt, back off. I’m busy.”

  “Have you forgotten what that thing is?”

  The patch flashed back. On and off.

  She replied. On for four seconds. And off. And again, on four seconds, then off.

  “Matt, I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Crazy woman.”

  The patch reappeared, brightened.

  Died.

  Reappeared.

  “Matt.” She was unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  “I see it.” He sounded skeptical, relieved, scared, wish-you-were-out-of-there. All at once. “I wonder what it’s saying.”

 
Antonio took a deep breath and shook his head. “Welcome to galactic center, I think.”

  “Phyl,” said Hutch, “you’re monitoring the radio frequencies, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. There is no radio signal of any kind, other than the normal background noise.”

  She blinked twice.

  The patch brightened and faded.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Antonio.

  The two eyes stared back at her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think we’ve exhausted our vocabulary.”

  “PHYL, WHAT ELSE can you tell us about the Mordecai area?”

  “Nothing you don’t already know, Hutch. No one, until now, has been able to establish anything unique about it. Other than that the omegas all track back to this general area. It is, of course, in orbit around the galactic center.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I can give you estimated dust particles per cubic meter if you like. And a few other technical details.”

  “Is the orbit stable?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Antonio was watching her. “What’s your point, Hutch? What are you looking for?”

  Filaments had begun moving laterally across the eyes. In sync. It was blinking.

  “Let’s pull back a bit,” she said.

  “Yeah. I’d feel better, too, if we put some distance between us.”

  She began to ease away.

  The patch went luminous again. Five bursts in quick succession.

  She stopped forward progress and blinked her lights. Five times.

  More bursts. Five.

  She started back. And returned the ship to its initial position. “It wants us to stay, Antonio.”

  “Maybe it wants to have us for dinner.”

  “Would Dr. Science say that?”

  “Absolutely. Listen, Hutch, I think we should get out of here.”

  “Maybe it just wants company.”

  “Hutch, you’re not thinking clearly. This thing manufactures omegas that go out and kill everything in sight.”

  Matt came on the circuit: “What’s going on?”

  “Hutch thinks it’s lonely.”

  He laughed. His voice had a strained quality.

  “It doesn’t seem to be hostile, Matt.”

  “Right. Not this son of a bitch.”

  “Matt, do you see any other eyes along the wall?”

  “Negative. Just those two.”

  She turned to Antonio. “Let’s try another tack. Can we agree this part of the galaxy wouldn’t get many visitors?”

  He chuckled. It was the old Dr. Science laugh that inevitably came while he demonstrated how an experiment might turn out differently from what one might expect. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Okay. If this is the thing that’s responsible for the omegas, it, or its ancestors, have been here more than a million years.”

  “Of course they have, Hutch. They live here.”

  “Maybe.” Hutch turned off her lights. The cloud went dark.

  ANTONIO’S NOTES

  Sitting out there so close to the thing that we could almost touch it was the scariest moment of my life. Even more than the snake in the hotel.

  The snake in the hotel was pretty bad. Terrifying. The wall wasn’t like that. The snake was a mindless product of natural forces. Like the black hole. Nothing personal. Just stay out of its way. But the eyes in the wall looked directly into me. I had the feeling it knew who I was, knew what I cared about, knew about Cristiana and the kids. Despite all of that, there was no sense of hostility. It was neutral. We didn’t matter.

  —Wednesday, March 12

  chapter 36

  MIDNIGHT.

  Antonio was watching the eye blinks. They were lateral, they happened once about every six minutes, and they took seventeen seconds to complete. Close and open. And they always occurred simultaneously.

  “It’s one creature,” Hutch said.

  Antonio nodded. “Yes.”

  “With a head several kilometers across?”

  “I doubt it. This thing doesn’t have a head. Not in the way we understand the term. But it’s connected somehow.”

  She blinked the navigation lights. The luminous patch reappeared. Went off. Came on again.

  Hutch repeated the pattern, and got a quick series of flashes in return. “I think you’re right,” Antonio said. “It wants to talk.” She seemed unusually subdued. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “What do you do after you’ve said hello?”

  “With this thing? I have no idea.”

  SHE TURNED ON the starboard green light. Blinked it three times. Then she ran the strobe, a series of red flashes, for a total of five seconds. Blinked starboard green three more times. Flashed the steady red light to port, and blinked the green nine times.

  The patch appeared and faded.

  She did it again. Same series.

  “What are you doing?” asked Antonio.

  “Hold on.”

  The patch reappeared. Blinked three. Then, higher in the cloud, they saw a burst of white light. The patch blinked three more times. Then a steady red glow. And finally the patch again, blinking to nine.

  “So,” said Antonio, “it more or less copies what you did. It didn’t quite get the colors right, but what’s the point?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” She tried another series: Blink green twice, run the strobe, two more blinks, port side red, then four blinks.

  She leaned forward, and Antonio got the sense her fingers were crossed.

  The cloud was quiet. Then the luminous patch came back and went off, the white burst reappeared momentarily, the patch appeared again and faded.

  Antonio sighed. “I still don’t see what it’s supposed to mean.”

  The red glow showed up again. Lasted a few seconds.

  Hutch leaned forward.

  The patch came on again and went off. Once.

  Yes! She raised a fist over her head.

  “What happened?” asked Antonio.

  “Two times two equal four,” she said. “It replied one times one equals one.”

  Antonio asked her to run the series again, and he saw. The white burst became a multiplier. The steady red light was an equals sign. “I’m impressed,” he said.

  She sent two times three, followed by the green light, a short and a long.

  The cloud responded with a steady red light and six blinks. The green signal established itself as a question mark. It was only a short distance from there to I understand. And its reverse.

  “So where do we go from here?”

  She tried two times two and flashed five. The creature returned a single yellow light. A quick flash. On and off. Three plus one equals five got another yellow flash. So she had no.

  She used the strobe. Kept it on for maybe ten seconds. I understand. She did two times two and gave the correct answer.

  The creature did its yellow light again, longer this time. Yes.

  GRADUALLY, DURING THE day, she built a primitive vocabulary. Plus and minus, up and down, forward and backward. She got inside and outside by sending out the lander, under Phyl’s control, and bringing it back in. Inside. Outside. Or maybe it was launch and recover. Well, let it go for now.

  The creature varied its signals by intensity and length of illumination and by a range of hues to equate to Hutch’s terms.

  To establish you and me/us, she dispatched the lander again, aimed its lights at the Preston, and sent her signal, three quick whites. Us. Then she directed the lander to spotlight the creature, and sent four. You.

  It responded with a yellow-white light, and sent four. Then a puff of gas and dust blew out of the cloud wall, in the general direction of the ship. The yellow-white light blinked three times.

  Okay. So we weren’t doing pronouns. It was names. The Preston was three; the creature in the cloud, four.

  “Not bad, though,” said Antonio.

  UNFORTUNATELY, SHE HADN’T gotten near the questions she wanted to ask. Ho
w long have you been here? Are you alone? Do you need help? Where are you from? Why are you sending bombs into the outer galaxy?

  A bit too complicated for the language so far.

  “I have an idea for alone,” Antonio said.

  She tried it. Five. Pause. One. Then the signal she wanted to mean alone. Then seven pause one. And the alone signal again. And a third round. Using four with one and alone. Then one equals and the alone signal again.

  When the creature responded nine and one, followed by one equals alone, she sent: You alone question mark.

  The patch brightened. Yes.

  Antonio gave her a broad smile. “Brilliant,” he said.

  “You’re talking about yourself.”

  “I know.” The smile got even wider. “We ought to give that thing a name.”

  “I thought we had.”

  “What?”

  “Frank,” she said.

  “THERE’S ONLY ONE of the damned things?” asked Jon.

  “That’s what it says.”

  “Is it responsible for the omega clouds?”

  “We haven’t been able to ask that question yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know how to spell omega.”

  He had no patience with her sense of humor and let her see it.

  “Look, Jon,” she said, “the thing’s about as easy to communicate with as you are.”

  “All right,” he said. “Do the best you can.”

  “You’re getting as bossy as Matt.”

  Matt’s voice broke in: “I heard that.”

  “Hi, Matthew.” She had known, of course, he’d be listening. “Just kidding.”

  “So you’re talking to the critter now,” Matt said.

  “More or less. So far it’s been a limited conversation.”

  “All right. I agree with Jon. Find out whatever you can. It would be nice to know what’s going on. What the reason is for the omegas.”

  “I’ll ask it when I can think of a way to do it.”

  “Okay. Meantime, you’re too close to the damned thing. I wish you’d back off.”

  In another age, Dr. Science had bitten his upper lip when he was about to reveal why, say, no matter how strong you were and how well you could fly, you couldn’t support a falling plane in midair. He bit his lip now, while his eyes acquired a distant look.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It might be stuck here.”