In the Distance, and Ahead in Time

by George Zebrowski

  “I don’t think you understand the nature of evolutionary thresholds,” the offworlder said. “These creatures have had their million years of preparation, and are ready to step onto the next plateau.”

  “Are they nearby?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “Why?” the Mayor demanded. “Are you afraid that we’ll send out armed parties to slaughter them?”

  “I would hope that’s not what you would do. They should not be disturbed, even by being observed.”

  “How did you watch them, then?”

  “Very discreetly, with special equipment.”

  “And now you will tell us that this world belongs to these creatures.”

  “Yes, but we would like to tell each household in your colony personally.”

  “Personally?” the Mayor asked. “Why? Most of them are hearing what you have to say right now, and those who aren’t will get it by word of mouth.”

  “We have enough volunteers to visit every home,” the offworlder said. “They will convey all the facts we have gathered. We believe that personal discussion is best.”

  “No one will listen to you trying to talk them out of their homes,” the Mayor said angrily.

  “We will speak only to those who are willing to listen.”

  “And what will you do after you’ve spoken to everyone?” the Mayor asked.

  “Let people decide for themselves what they wish to do about the problem, if anything.”

  “And that’s all?” the Mayor asked.

  “Yes. What else do you imagine we would do?”

  “Well, you clearly have the power to enforce your will on us. I don’t think many of us, if any at all, will wish to leave our homes for a new life on your mobile.”

  “Please understand that we never use force, only persuasion. For example, we will offer to show your people the evolving intelligences of this world. Those who make the request to view them will be given the means to judge for themselves.”

  As Gemma listened to the offworlder’s low, clear voice and rational tone, she felt a compelling kinship that went far beyond the issue under discussion. Here was a mind that seemed to have no self-serving preconceptions, that was tolerant yet unafraid to expose hypocrisy, and that would be willing to help any form of intelligent life. Gemma did not feel threatened by the visitor. She wondered, however, what the offworlders would do if their persuasion failed. The emissary had said that they would do nothing at all, but she could not quite understand how that could be. Alan would laugh and say that they didn’t really believe what they said, that it was all just talk.

  “Go ahead,” Mayor Overton said. “Speak to as many people as you wish, for all the good it will do you.”

  4

  Gemma watched the flitter come in low over the newly plowed south field, where Alan usually planted beans. He came out on the porch as the slightly flattened egg-shape settled to the ground on the dirt road that ran past the house.

  “They’re wasting their time,” he said through clenched teeth. “No one’s going to get me off the land where my parents are buried.” She noticed that he had said my, not our, parents.

  She left him on the porch, went down the steps, and approached the craft, trying to imagine the vast energies that controlled it with such ease, more power than she and Alan could expend in a thousand years of working the farm, and she felt the waste of their lives. Knowledge shaped into a graceful use of power ran the craft, which was probably no more to the people of the mobile than a shovel or scythe was to Alan.

  “Well, what are they waiting for?” Alan shouted. “Let’s see these superior people.”

  An oval door opened in the lower half of the vehicle, and a youthful face peered out.

  “Greetings!” a young woman’s voice called out. “May I approach?”

  “Come ahead!” Gemma replied. Alan cleared his throat nervously behind her, and she felt his tension as the visitor stepped out of the craft. She was dressed in brown coveralls and boots.

  “My name is Briddy,” she said as she came forward.

  Gemma looked into a thin, oval, olive-skinned face with dark blue eyes and short black hair. Alan was silent as Gemma turned and led the visitor up the steps.

  “My name is Gemma Szigeti, and this is my brother Alan,” she said as they all sat down in the wicker chairs. Gemma was about to get up again, but stopped herself. Had the woman been a farmer or townsperson, Gemma would have offered her some food and drink, but she was suddenly unsure. The offworlder might not want to risk contamination with alien microbes. That was foolish, Gemma realized; these people were advanced enough to protect themselves. It was more likely that Briddy would not care for their food; maybe her people regarded food that came from soil or living creatures as disgusting.

  Briddy looked at each of them in turn and asked, “You’ve listened to the radio discussions?”

  “Yes,” Gemma said.

  “I’ve come to hear your views, and to discuss them with you. And through my link, all my people who have an interest will share in understanding.”

  “Link?” Alan asked.

  Briddy touched her temple. “All of us who wish it may have a link, to whatever degree we wish, to communicate with one another and with the intelligences that care for our lives.”

  “Intelligences?” Alan asked.

  “Minds that grew from simpler designs, and with which we are now engaged in further design, both of them and of ourselves.” Alan looked perplexed. “They are our educational, medical, and economic system, supporting our lives,” Briddy added. “A second nature, in your view. But let’s begin with your views.”

  Alan gave a nervous laugh. “What? You think that we’ll just talk and you’ll make me see things your way?”

  “Either you will or you won’t,” Briddy replied. “That will be up to you.”

  “And what about all those others who’ll be listening in?” Alan demanded.

  “Our discussion will increase their understanding.”

  “It means nothing at all,” Alan said firmly, “your finding a few clever animals in the forest. We’re more important than what they may be someday.”

  Gemma started to feel ashamed of her brother, but was surprised to see that Briddy was listening to him intently, as if he were saying something important.

  “Then you’d say,” Briddy replied, “that you would have been convinced to leave if we had found fully developed intelligence, but you can’t take seriously something still so far ahead in time?”

  “Find what you like,” Alan said warily. “I won’t leave. We’ll just have to get along as best we can, that’s all.”

  “But even if you could coexist, let’s say successfully,” Briddy continued, “would it be fair for you to perturb a natural development that is powerless to resist you? Don’t they deserve a chance to develop in their own way?”

  “Who?” Alan asked with contempt, making Gemma feel ashamed. “There isn’t anyone. All we have is your word that they exist.”

  “Even if there were no signs of intelligent life on this world,” Briddy replied, “the problem would be the same. You would never know what would be lost.”

  Alan grimaced. “That makes no sense to me.”

  “Because Earthlike planets will eventually develop intelligent life, sooner or later. And what do you think?” Briddy asked Gemma.

  Gemma sighed. “I can’t be as certain as my brother.”

  Briddy sat back in her wicker chair. “Alan, you’ve said that facts or arguments will never change your mind. That’s a curious way to think.”

  “Now you’re going to tell us how to think,” Alan said.

  Briddy leaned forward. “Thinking’s difficult to do correctly. It requires that one strip off all loyalty to group and self-interest, sometimes even to values and traditions, to tra
ditional beliefs and perfectly natural evolutionary impulses, and follow where the observation of facts leads, not where one wishes to go—and the conclusions reached may not be happy ones, however true.” She glanced at Gemma. “Most unassisted attempts at thought are little more than a collection of musings and associations.”

  “My sister will think as I do,” Alan said, “when she sees that what you offer would end all that we’ve made here. It’s not worth it.”

  Briddy smiled. “But equal values sometimes conflict. You were not here first. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “How can it, when it means giving up what we’ve worked for?”

  “It would be a great loss, of course, but is there a greater loss to consider?”

  “Not from where I sit,” Alan said.

  Gemma gazed into the offworlder’s face, as if she might glimpse something of the woman’s life. “Briddy, can you tell us something of the way you live?”

  “There may be hundreds of human mobiles in the galaxy by now,” Briddy replied. “Each grows in its own way, reproducing as necessary to accommodate population and ways of living, using the vast energies of the cosmos to establish life permanently, in a continuously various culture. These mobiles grew from the few that escaped the death of Earth. But there were other survivors, smaller starships, like the one that brought you here. They settled on planets, with much less success.”

  “And you disapprove of those,” Alan said.

  “How old are you, Briddy?” Gemma asked.

  “One hundred and three, counting by old Earth years.”

  Alan grimaced. “You seem happy enough in your ways, so why bother trying to teach us?”

  Briddy smiled. “We once imagined that we could free ourselves completely of natural planets. But they are still our visible origins, culturally and biologically. Old Earth survives on perhaps a dozen worlds, in fragmented and backward ways. And because the old song of planets still sings within us, groups of our own people escape to these worlds whenever we enter such a solar system. We let them go, even though their presence will only quicken the destruction of a particular world’s native development.”

  “You let some of your people go?” Alan asked, raising his brows.

  Briddy nodded. “For them, life is native to the whole universe, and has a right to spread and compete where it will. I hold the other view, prevalent in most mobiles, that natural planets are the cradles of intelligence, not to be tampered with, and that is why we are interested in what happens here. What you have of Old Earth’s culture deserves to develop from strength rather than linger here, scratching the soil for a meager existence, always at risk.”

  Gemma’s interest quickened as she imagined the life of the mobiles. She glanced at her brother and saw that something of the wonder was also catching him up.

  “Earthly planets may never be truly habitable,” Briddy continued. “Oh, humankind can breathe their atmospheres and drink their waters, but long-term survival inevitably requires extreme measures against native plant and animal life, especially against the microscopic and chemical systems. Human beings can either bioengineer themselves to fit a particular world, or wage decisive war against its life. Native life is either changed or destroyed unfairly if the colony is strong enough to grow. Three of the colonies we’ve visited have already failed. The rest will sooner or later fail, and we cannot let that happen, as much as it is in our power to prevent it. So we make our offers, to save what we can of what is left of human planetary life, and protect the native life of worlds that is still developing. Your lives could be extended indefinitely and your health secured. You would be given access to broad knowledge, enabling you to grow and change, and become different people over a vast span of time that would be measured in thousands of years, and might one day expand into a large portion of the universe’s life. You would have a sense of fulfillment that has for most of human history been felt only in rare moments of inspiration.”

  Alan got up, trembling. “I can’t take any more of this nonsense. You belittle my hard work and tell me that if I stay here I’ll either be a failure or some kind of criminal.” Gemma looked up at him pleadingly, but he went on. “That’s what this person, or whatever it is, is telling us! How can you listen to it?”

  “Alan …” Gemma started to say as she saw how shocked and hurt he was.

  “Go with them and conquer death,” he continued. “Live among the pure. But it’s not for me. It just can’t ever be, because it prevents everything still to come.”

  “Oh, I see,” Briddy said. “You hope for a life after death.”

  “Our faith tells us that this life shapes us for the next. If you succeed, you go on. If you fail, then you become nothing when you die.”

  “Success means moral success?” Briddy asked.

  “And loyalty to community, steadfastness in hard times. In a word, character that will stand through death.”

  “And God?” Briddy asked.

  “He is unknown, but he will show himself to those who survive life.”

  “We hope for nothing beyond life,” Briddy said, and paused for a moment. “There is no kind way to say it, but all the old religious imaginings, in our view, were a response to the humiliations of living, visions of what intelligence might accomplish in the physical realm, which is spiritual enough. We don’t deny the reality of religious feelings, but we know them for what they are, an older way of managing life, of getting people to behave morally.”

  “And you imagine that you’ve now got what all the religions promised, in the here-and-now,” Alan said with a sneer. “Well, I guess we still need our religion here.”

  “We’ve made a good start,” Briddy said, “on the road to a greater existence, which we call macrolife.”

  “But you can’t be sure that there isn’t another realm,” Alan said.

  “Perhaps there is, but I don’t think so. At the very least we don’t support faith by appeals to the unknown. Organized faith, especially, is a self-serving error, a way of forming unimpeachable beliefs as a shield against questioning and the distress of new knowledge. The very nature of codified faith is to resist all argument and proof, all rational longing to learn more, by ending all discussion. Faith forbids all questioning of itself. It is at bottom something familiar—life’s natural self-confidence, but this should not be mistaken for knowledge.”

  Gemma watched as Alan sat down again, looking confused and beaten. “I don’t know what you’re saying—it sounds insanely arrogant to me. Get out of here! We’ll survive whether you help us or not.”

  “What you fear,” Briddy said, “is that in our control of death we cling to this side of the horizon, denying ourselves what you call further spiritual growth. But you should not fear this, because we do grow and learn.”

  Alan glared at her, then looked away. The visitor from the stars rose to leave.

  “Briddy!” Gemma said suddenly. “Show me what you found in the forest. I want to see for myself.” She looked at her brother, but he refused to meet her eyes. “I have to, Alan. There’s no other way to be sure. Try to understand, and come with me.”

  He stared down at his feet, unable to answer.

  “You’re among the first to make this request,” Briddy said. “I will arrange it.” She left the porch and walked toward her flitter. Alan was silent as the craft lifted from the ground, but his face was taut with tension.

  Gemma knelt by her brother and tried to embrace him. “Alan, please! We’ll be losing nothing by seeing for ourselves. Just think, if all this is true, then there’s nothing we can ever lose. We’ll have everything.”

  He looked at her for a moment, and shook his head in denial. “You’re losing yourself,” he muttered.

  5

  Alan ignored her all during the next day, going about his chores with a silence that accused her of betrayal.

  “It’s no
t wrong for me to try to find out all I can,” she said at dinner. The kitchen window was open, letting in an unusually warm breeze from the south, bringing the spicy smells of the forest.

  “And what will that be?” he asked.

  “Whatever there is.”

  “Whatever they want you to see. You’ll end up thinking as they do, because that’s what they’re set to do here, make us believe what they think.”

  Hurt, she asked, “Do you really believe I’m a child that can be led around by the nose?”

  “You always could talk.”

  “That’s not fair, Alan.”

  “What’s fair got to do with it? Doing right may not be pleasant.” He laughed. “Even that Briddy agrees with that!”

  “You’re twisting things, Alan, ignoring what’s really going on. The entire colony has looked the other way for three generations.”

  “We’ve been busy surviving.”

  “If only you’d take the trouble to think.”

  “I have thought about it. I listened to … that person, or whatever it is, spout nonsense for over an hour, and all I could see was how it was working on you, making you into someone else.”

  “Is that all you saw?” Gemma asked, searching his face until he glared back at her.

  That night Gemma dreamed of creatures from the forest climbing up to the plateau and peering through her window. The round eyes looked deeply into her. She gazed back and saw self-awareness increasing toward the day when it would look up at the stars through a clear midnight, and question. A thousand years hence, a hundred thousand, a million? Was that too long to matter?

  And then the eyes became her brother’s, but still set in an alien face, and she woke up. The warm breeze was still wafting in from the forest through the open window of her bedroom, whispering about growing things—molds, mushrooms and rotting wood, and flowers.

  She lay back and tried to sleep, and in a moment the eyes were at her window again.

  It was afternoon, two days later, when the flitter landed again in front of the house. Gemma hurried out to the craft, not wanting to provoke Alan, and slipped quickly inside as the lock opened.