The Universe of Things

by Gwyneth Jones

  “Water burial?”

  “No.” Sasha knew how much room there was for misapprehension; and yet what was there to trust in a situation like this, if not intuition? Understanding thrilled through her. “She means the reflection. Heaven is like here. Heaven is the same as being alive.”

  Someone laughed. A shiny doll stalked across the turf; Merle had followed them. She knelt by the pool and flicked her silver, stylized hand into the surface. Loveliness vanished in a welter of bobbing ripples.

  “You can look, but you’d better not touch.”

  Merle laughed again inside their helmets, and the doll walked away.

  “I’m getting worried about the captain,” said Sasha.

  Merle picked a fight with Bob Irwin. She was envious of the new friendship, and it had to be Bob she attacked because she was a little afraid of Sasha. Bob had made some joking remark about the Ma’atians getting the impression that Earth was a female-ordered society, and she was onto him immediately.

  He defended himself: “Well, you are the captain. And you girls outnumber us boys. That’s all I meant —”

  “Why do you think that is, Bob?”

  “I don’t know, no idea.”

  “Could it be statistical? Could it be there are so many more ‘mad’ women scientists available, that with the worst will in the world this transgalactic political advertisement had to have a female majority? In fact, over all, Bob, I think you’d find there are more ‘mad’ women about of any persuasion. Non-violent, able to walk and talk and keep themselves clean, that is. Men have to be doubly incontinent psychos before anyone declares them unemployable —”

  “Quiet down!” yelled Nanazetta, banging his dinner tray on a bulkhead.

  It was mealtime again, of course. Shards of mashed potato and bloody beef sailed through the air and landed — splat: because they were not in space now. “I’m watching you, Captain Shaw. You’re trying to fuck us up. You’re bad for our morale, Captain. I’m going to report that, when we get home.”

  “You stupid bastard. None of us is ever going home.”

  “Yes we are, Merle,” Bob broke in quickly. (He wished he’d never started this.) “When the survey’s done we’re going right back home, we’re going to get debriefed out of the project and go on with our normal lives.”

  “Only richer —” he added heartily, and Sugi cheered.

  Merle seemed to grow calm. Perhaps even she realized she’d gone too far. She smiled a little and nodded. “Mmmh, yeah. Okay.” She sighed innocently. “You know Bob, I’ve thought of a better name for this place. You ought to call it Duat, not Ma’at. I’m sure you remember. That was the Ancient Egyptian word for heaven.”

  Bob and Sasha and Sugi all began to smile.

  “You know, the place where the dead people go.”

  They stopped smiling.

  The captain snickered unkindly.

  Sasha explored the outskirts of the Ma’atian village, admiring the beautifully tended farming plots. No doubt because of the impression of that first encounter with the children, she had the persistent conviction that the Ma’atians were not the simple primitives they seemed. There was no real evidence for this fantasy of an advanced, post-industrial idyll, but it was a strong intuition. Not that it mattered. She had to admit, Merle had a right to jeer. She and Bob were just playing. They had no way of knowing whether their “notes” even found their way into Cheops’ records. In any form. Still she couldn’t help looking at this place with greed and awe. A new race! It was riches beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

  That must be what the Cheops was thinking too, as it circled around this world. Riches! She knew it was absurd to feel concern for the Ma’atians. No doubt the crowded and hungry Earth would be glad to colonize this lovely place, but there was little danger of imminent invasion! Apart from the ruinous expense and the decades of engineering involved in such an exodus, you wouldn’t get the most desperate colonists to accept the terms the crew of the Cheops had accepted; and the alternative (she had a rough idea of the notional realtime/realspace element of their voyage here) would be a journey of several hundred years.

  There was nothing to be done in any case. None of them had any control at all over the mission or their ship. She thought of comments that the first US astronauts had had to endure from their pilot buddies: a monkey’s gonna make the first flight. The Cheops crew were less than monkeys. They traveled like fleas on a dog, though a quite irrational proportion of the finance had been devoted to arranging their passage. Human interest stories help to raise funds. The “experiences” of the crew would be retrieved and reconstructed as marketing videos. And one day, one day, one day, their pioneering voyage might be seen as the beginning of something. But she had no control of this “suit” in which she walked, though apparently by her own will. It was a remote function of the AI out in space, like the lobster things but less useful.

  The development that had made a crewed probe possible was a technique for transferring the whole of a human subjective entity into electrochemical storage. As pure information the passengers could disintegrate and reintegrate without injury: stitching in and out through the vastness of space/time. A brain-dead body remained on earth, while that which was Sasha felt itself to be here and intact: filling this suit with arms, hands, belly, fingers, like some Kirlian ghost. And in a way, she really was here. They’d been told that EVA “in” these humanoid shells was important for their survival, analog of the endless exercises with which conventional spacefarers warded off bone death. But where was she in reality? And would they really be able to “go home”?

  She had been able to accept, just about, the consensual reality that they created inside the lander (very small, for five people, as the Ma’atian child had naively observed), and been able to stretch that reality to include their excursions to places like the red smog, the lichen desert. It was Ma’at that was giving her problems, breaking her up.

  They none of them knew how anything worked. Cheops was supposed to run the life support system, giving them anything they needed in the way of perceptual construct to keep them sane. How far would it go? Sugi Ohba had always cared least — or had seemed to think least — about their existential predicament. Since the landing on Ma’at she’d been behaving exactly as if her suit actually contained her body. She picked flowers! What did the AI out in orbit make of that?

  Sasha felt the vertigo that they had been warned to avoid. Like Orpheus they must not look at what they were doing, or it would vanish… She trembled (and that seemed real). She had accepted the bargain willingly, embracing a heroic destiny as they said on her country’s television. She had felt that she hardly deserved all the approval; she didn’t have a lot to lose. She chewed miserably on her non-existent lip.

  To dance.

  To touch someone’s hand…to touch a leaf or a flower…

  They must keep the consensus going, but it must be a rational consensus. Sugi’s thoughtlessness was as dangerous as Merle’s cynicism. It was true that sexual equality had still to be achieved, especially in the former “western” nations. It was true they all had hard-luck stories. But life is better than death.

  Beyond the farm plots forested hills began, but there was a well trodden path. A plump terracotta figure was watching her, leaning on a kind of hoe in one of the last vegetable gardens.

  “Is there another village?”

  Sasha pointed down the path and sketched roofs in the air.

  The woman (close up you could tell from the clothes) left her hoe and came over. She gestured, and whistled “Schooo.”

  Sasha and Bob had decided that one meant something like “far.” They were compiling a tentative glossary.

  The woman looked her dead in the eye (another shared cultural gesture, like the concept of heaven). She crouched and drew in the dirt. Houses: a little cluster of turned up roofs. “Schoo, schoo.” She headed down the path…several strides, and made another sketch. The scale was large, then.

  “Heesh!
Heesh!”

  The woman jerked her hands in the affirmative sign and again looked at the invader straight on: firmly, undeniably intelligible.

  We like it that way, she said.

  We like to be friendly, but we like our neighbors to keep their distance.

  Sugi was by the lander, looking lost. She was waiting for a mealtime, guessed Sasha. Sugi could not snack, she had lost the ability in institutional years. “These people are so nice,” she burst out. “You know the boys who come and hang around the ship?” Those were girls and boys but Sugi didn’t understand that. “They were here earlier. And the one I call Charlie, he asked me — clear as words: Why don’t you stay forever?”

  They entered the lander. As usual Sasha’s consciousness elided the transition: the two of them were in the crew environment, in their shipboard clothes. The idiot woman beamed and sighed. She was having a holiday romance now.

  “Isn’t that lovely. D’you think he means it?”

  Sasha wished that someone else was here. “He means it. They don’t want any of us to get back to Earth.”

  “Huh? Er — Why not?”

  “Are you kidding? Because they’re not stupid, you idiot. Not stupid at all. And they overestimate our technology.”

  Sugi took fright and retired into the sleeping pod. Sasha felt a desire to eat (for reassurance), but had no appetite — the phantom itch of an amputated limb. That was a danger sign. She thought about the five of them, lying back on Earth like so many Walt Disneys in their glass coffins; and with just about as much chance (let’s face it) of successful resurrection. She imagined the Cheops team agreeing among themselves. We’ll find ways round the problem eventually. But so it goes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. She had sometimes thought the “special brain chemistry” was a myth, invented as compensation.

  But she still wanted to go home. And the Ma’atians didn’t understand.

  Where is Bob? she wondered in sudden panic. Where is Nanazetta, where is Merle? They don’t want us to leave, to go back and report on this choice bit of real estate. They’re trying to split us up, they’re picking at the weak links.

  Merle was alone, most alone. She could have been in Eden before the fall. She had walked into the hills above the settlement. They had closed behind her; now there was nothing, not a whisper of birdsong or the sound of water. She followed a ridge path, deeper and deeper into a world of green crags and plunging chasms. This is Treasure Island, she said to herself derisively. Presently I will shoot a goat and dress myself in skins. Her Kirlian eyes were wide open and very still. An enormous presence watched at her back and looked down at her from the heights. She was afraid, though there was nothing to fear; and finally so afraid that she could go no further.

  She sat on a rocky promontory beside the path. This is how it must have been, she thought, to wake up in the world. The first thinking thing, looking at the not-thinking. So much greater than I. The huge crags looked down at her tiny figure, impassively. She knew that to endow that green immensity with persona was a reflex of fear: fear of what it really was. Slowly, slowly, she let the fallacy slip away. And fell into unknowing…

  After a while she got up and stripped off the suit. She was naked under it. She stood examining her body, wondering if she would know it among a hundred other bodies of tallish, dark-haired white women — apart from the all too familiar face. She thought not. The small white sun was warm. She could feel it, she could see the shadow it gave her. A Ma’atian child appeared, coming down the path. On seeing her naked it beamed all over its face and sat down on the edge of the promontory.

  “Hello,” said Merle cautiously.

  She knew this was an adolescent female, from the patterns on the tiny kilt slung around its slender hips. If you didn’t look too closely it made a pretty young woman, in spite of the fishlike teeth.

  You have taken your clothes off, remarked the girl, in gesture and whistle-clicking. We didn’t think you could do that. We thought you were maybe ghosts. She touched the shed carapace curiously.

  Merle laughed. “What a silly idea.”

  Perhaps the laugh seemed like an invitation. The child settled more closely on the rocky perch and took Merle’s hand. I like you very much, she pantomimed. Why don’t you stay with us, don’t go away in that little box. I wish you would stay. The pretty girl seemed sweetly sincere; however, Merle understood at once that she was being tempted, and knew why. She started to giggle. It was so ludicrous. Make love not war; Sugi had said that. Which was typical of Sugi, the good-hearted simpleton. Sugi was probably the only one of them all, villagers and invaders, who didn’t know this paradise was doomed.

  The natives had no way of guessing their world had five hundred years’ grace — at a conservative estimate! But Merle was not about to try and explain. Let them sweat. Technology does make giant strides sometimes. They could be right to be scared for their very own skins.

  “Why should I want to stay with you,” she snarled, losing her temper. “You made me suffer. Just when I thought it was all over, damn you. You made me feel things I thought I was safe from forever. You want to know the truth? We’re not explorers; we’re a bunch of escaped maniacs. And the rest of the asylum’s coming right after us!”

  The child was not affected by human rage. Emboldened by the lengthy speech she moved even closer, grinning. We call you, the people who wrap up their farts, she confided. It must get very smelly inside your boxes.

  The mime was clever and ridiculous. Merle snorted. They laughed together, uproariously. Merle wiped her eyes; looked down at herself; looked at the alien girl — in sudden, belated, heart-catching wonder —

  Sasha was still in the crew environment, panicking and wishing she could make herself feel hungry, when Merle joined her. She began checking Cheops’ present status on the information screens. She was obviously in a foul mood. She glared at Sasha and asked abruptly, “Have you been having hallucinations?”

  Sasha was alarmed. “Have you?”

  Merle just scowled. “Where’s Sugi?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  Merle groped around in the wall niches. She located the worn piece of scrap paper, and after some rummaging the safety pin. She pinned the booking notice on the sleeping pod diaphragm, and seemed to be daring Sasha to comment. As she was about to disappear, she looked around briefly.

  “Cowardice and stupidity,” she said in a bored tone, “are the mainsprings of your existence. And mine. Do you know why they picked us for Cheops? Because we’re too stupid to kill ourselves, and too scared to do anything else.”

  Sasha went up to the lake, feeling safer now that both of her weak links were accounted for. She was thinking wistfully that Cheops was bound to call an end to shore leave soon. A shiny doll came running up. She was afraid it was Sugi or Merle, turned violent; but it was Bob Irwin.

  “Where’s the captain?” he yelled

  “She’s in the sleeping pod with Sugi.”

  “Oh, fuck. We’ve go to do something. Nanazetta’s jumped ship.

  “What?”

  “He has! He has! I found his suit. He dumped his suit!”

  Sasha jumped to her feet. “They’ve got the Do Not Disturb sign up,” she wailed.

  The token was so sacred that even in this crisis they didn’t know what to do.

  “Fuck it,” decided Bob. “We’ll go after him ourselves.”

  “Go after him?” Sasha was bewildered. “But he’s, I mean, if he’s not in the suit?”

  “Sash, either I’m going crazy or… Come and see.”

  The suit was where Bob had found it, stowed in composting vegetation at the bottom of a Ma’atian garden. The footprints lead away: distinctly human, nothing like the tracks of the natives. The Ma’atians agreed that the fifth stranger had gone away. They even agreed, reluctantly, to show his friends where he was.

  Nanazetta had covered a surprising amount of ground: when Bob and Sasha discussed it they couldn’t remember when they had last seen h
im. He could have been gone for days, and their “reality” might have just closed over the gap. They lay in their shiny suits under unknown stars, beside the two adult Ma’atians who were guiding the search party. Neither of them managed to sleep.

  In the morning they found him. They had been following a rocky valley that dwarfed the tiny stream buried in its midst. Ahead, the country was beginning to open out, and they could see that this was no island. The green crags were the foothills of a great mountain chain, looming up against the lemon-colored dawn sky.

  “Awesome,” breathed Irwin.

  And there was Nanazetta. The Ma’atians gestured upwards, and Sasha saw the physiologist’s big burly pink body. He was watching from a grassy cove, a natural step in the steep valley wall. The figure bobbed out of sight.

  “He’s up there!” yelled Bob. “Let’s get the bugger!”

  The Ma’atians stayed below. Bob and Sasha climbed. In the cove, an extraordinary sight met their eyes. Somebody had started building a hut. There were Ma’atian artifacts strewn around, and on a flat rock someone had been mixing brown clay with water to plaster the stake-and-creeper walls. A Ma’atian boy squatted beside this rock, his arms wrapped around his knees. To Sasha he looked proud and frightened, and a little guilty. She guessed at the desperate plotting: the urgent deliberations of a society not given to violence, trying to invent strategies for survival against the odds. It was a world of affection and comfort; they had no other weapons.

  While Sasha saw this Bob Irwin was catapulted back to earth by bewilderment. He saw the boy as a youngster of his own race, and was appalled.

  “You can’t mean to live with him!” he cried. “You’re ruining your life, kid. The man’s a horror story. He eats red meat!”

  He remembered the glossary, and tried whistling and clicking; hoped he was saying something. “Don’t stay with bad stranger. Your people better. Go home!”