The Best of Michael Swanwick

by Michael Swanwick

  Abigail routed an intercom call through to the crewroom. A small chime notified him of her call, and he waved a hand in combined greeting and direction to remain silent. He was hunched over a keyout. The screen above it came to life.

  “Ritual greetings, spider,” he said.

  “Hello, human. We wish to pursue our previous inquiry: the meaning of the term ‘art’ which was used by the human Dominguez six-sixteenths of the way through his major presentation.”

  “That is a difficult question. To understand a definition of art, you must first know the philosophy of aesthetics. This is a comprehensive field of knowledge comparable to the study of perception. In many ways it is related.”

  “What is the trade value of this field of knowledge?”

  Dominguez appeared, looking upset. He opened his mouth and Paul touched a finger to his own lips, nodding his head toward the screen.

  “Significant. Our society considers art and science as being of roughly equal value.”

  “We will consider what to offer in exchange.”

  “Good. We also have a question for you. Please wait while we select the phrasing.” He cut the translation lines, turned to Dominguez. “Looks like your raft gambit paid off. Though I’m surprised they bit at that particular piece of bait.”

  Dominguez looked weary. “Did they mention the incident with the cat?”

  “No, nor the communications blackout.”

  The old man sighed. “I always felt close to the aliens,” he said. “Now they seem—cold, inhuman.” He attempted a chuckle. “That was almost a pun, wasn’t it?”

  “In a human, we’d call it a professional attitude. Don’t let it spoil your accomplishment,” Paul said. “This could be as big as optics.” He opened the communications line again. “Our question is now phrased.” Abigail noted he had not told Dominguez of her presence.

  “Please go ahead.”

  “Why did you alter our test animal?”

  Much leg waving. “We improved the ratios garble centers of perception garble wetware garble making the animal twelve-sixteenths as intelligent as a human. We thought you would be pleased.”

  “We were not. Why did the test animal behave in a hostile manner toward us?”

  The spider’s legs jerked quickly, and it disappeared from the screen. Like an echo, the machine said, “Please wait.”

  Abigail watched Dominguez throw Paul a puzzled look. In thebackground, a man with a leather sack looped over one shoulder was walking slowly along the twisty access path. His hand dipped into the sack, came out, sprinkled fireflies among the greenery. Dipped in, came out again. Even in the midst of crisis, the trivia of day-to-day existence went on.

  The spider reappeared, accompanied by two of its own kind. Their legs interlaced and retreated rapidly, a visual pantomime of an excited conversation. Finally, one of their number addressed the screen.

  “We have discussed the matter.”

  “So I see.”

  “It is our conclusion that the experience of translation through Ginungagap had a negative effect on the test animal. This was not anticipated. It is new knowledge. We know so little of the psychology of carbon-based life.”

  “You’re saying the test animal was driven mad?”

  “Key word did not translate. We assume understanding. Steps must be taken to prevent a recurrence of this damage. Can you do this?”

  Paul said nothing.

  “Is this the reason why communications were interrupted?”

  No reply.

  “There is a cultural gap. Can you clarify?”

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” Paul said, and switched the screen off. “You can set your people to work,” he told Dominguez. “No reason why they should answer the last few questions, though.”

  “Were they telling the truth?” Dominguez asked wonderingly.

  “Probably not. But at least now they’ll think twice before trying to jerk us around again.” He winked at Abigail, and she switched off the intercom.

  ***

  They reran the test using a baboon shipped out from the Belt Zoological Gardens. Abigail watched it arrive from the lip station, crated and snarling.

  “They’re a lot stronger than we are,” Paul said. “Very agile. If the spiders want to try any more tricks, we couldn’t offer them better bait.”

  The test went smooth as silk. The baboon was shot through Ginungagap, held by the spiders for several hours, and returned. Exhaustive testing showed no tampering with the animal.

  Abigail asked how accurate the tests were. Paul hooked his handsbehind his back. “We’re returning the baboon to the Belt. We wouldn’t do that if we had any doubts. But—” He raised an eyebrow, asking Abigail to finish the thought.

  “But if they’re really hostile, they won’t underestimate us twice. They’ll wait for a human to tamper with.”

  Paul nodded.

  ***

  The night before Abigail’s send-off they made love. It was a frenzied and desperate act, performed wordlessly and without tenderness. Afterward they lay together, Abigail idly playing with Paul’s curls.

  “Gail…” His head was hidden in her shoulder; she couldn’t see his face. His voice was muffled.

  “Mmmm?”

  “Don’t go.”

  She wanted to cry. Because as soon as he said it, she knew it wasanother test, the final one. And she also knew that Paul wanted her to fail it. That he honestly believed that traversing Ginungagap would kill her, and that the woman who emerged from the spiders’ black hole would not be her.

  His eyes were shut; she could tell by the creases in his forehead. He knew what her answer was. There was no way he could avoid knowing.

  Abigail sensed that this was as close to a declaration of emotion asPaul was capable of. She felt how he despised himself for using his real emotions as yet another test, and how he could not even pretend to himself that there were circumstances under which he would not test her so. This must be how it feels to think as he does, she thought. To constantly scrabble after every last implication, like eternally picking at a scab.

  “Oh, Paul,” she said.

  He wrenched about, turning his back to her. “Sometimes I wish”—his eyes rose in front of his face like claws; they moved toward his eyes, closed into fists—“that for just ten goddamned minutes I could turn my mind off. His voice was bitter.

  Abigail huddled against him, looped a hand over his side and onto his chest. “Hush,” she said.

  ***

  The tug backed away from Clotho, dwindling until it was one of a ring of bright sparks pacing the platform. Mother was a point source lost in the starfield. Abigail shivered, pulled off her armbands, and shoved them into a storage sack. She reached for her cache-sex, hesitated.

  The hell with it, she thought. It’s nothing they haven’t seen before. She shucked it off, stood naked. Gooseflesh rose on the backs of her legs. She swam to the transmittal device, feeling awkward under the distant watching eyes.

  Abigail groped into the clamshell. “Go,” she said.

  The metal closed about her seamlessly, encasing her in darkness. She floated in a lotus position, bobbing slightly.

  A light gripping field touched her, stilling her motion. On cue, hypnotic commands took hold in her brain. Her breathing became shallow; her heart slowed. She felt her body ease into stasis. The final command took hold.

  Abigail weighed fifty keys. Even though the water in her body would not be transmitted, the polymer chain she was to be transformed into would be two hundred seventy-five kilometers long. It would take fifteen minutes and seventeen seconds to unravel at light speed, negligibly longer at translation speed. She would still be sitting in Clotho when the spiders began knitting her up.

  It was possible that Garble had gone mad from a relatively swift transit. Paul doubted it, but he wasn’t taking any chances. To protect Abigail’s sanity, the meds had wetwired a travel fantasy into her brain. It would blind her to external reality while she tra
veled.

  ***

  She was an eagle. Great feathered wings extended out from her shoulders. Clotho was gone, leaving her alone in space. Her skin was red and leathery, her breasts hard and unyielding. Feathers covered her thighs, giving way at the knees to scaley talons.

  She moved her wings, bouncing lightly against the thin solar wind swirling down into Ginungagap. The vacuum felt like absolute freedom. She screamed a predator’s exultant shrill. Nothing enclosed her; she was free of restrictions forever.

  Below her lay Ginungagap, the primal chasm, an invisible challenge marked by a reed smudge of glowing gases. It was inchoate madness, a gibbering impersonal force that wanted to draw her in, to crush her in its embrace. Its hunger was fierce and insatiable.

  Abigail held her place briefly, effortlessly. Then she folded her wings and dove.

  A rain of X rays stung through her, the scattering of Ginungagap’saccretion disk. They were molten iron passing through a ghost. Shrieking defiance, she attacked, scattering sparks in her wake.

  Ginungagap grew, swelled, until it swallowed up her vision. It was purest black, unseeable, unknowable, a thing of madness. It was Enemy.

  A distant objective part of her knew that she was still in Clotho, the polymer chain being unraveled from her body, accelerated by a translator, passing through two black holes, and simultaneously being knit up by the spiders. It didn’t matter.

  She plunged into Ginungagap as effortlessly as if it were the film of a soap bubble.

  In—

  —and out.

  It was like being reversed in a mirror, or watching an entertainment run backward. She was instantly flying out the way she came. The sky was a mottled mass of violet light.

  The stars before her brightened from violet to blue. She craned her neck, looked back at Ginungagap, saw its disk-shaped nothingness recede, and screamed in frustration because it had escaped her. She spread her wings to slow her flight and—

  —was sitting in a dark place. Her hand reached out, touched metal, recognized the inside of a clamshell device.

  A hairlike crack of light looped over her, widened. The clamshell opened.

  Oceans of color bathed her face. Abigail straightened, and the act of doing so lifted her up gently. She stared through the transparent bubble at a phosphorescent foreverness of light.

  My God, she thought. The stars.

  The stars were thicker, more numerous than she was used to, large and bright and glittery-rich. She was probably someplace significant, a star cluster or the center of the galaxy; she couldn’t guess. She felt irrationally happy to simply be; she took a deep breath, then laughed.

  “Abigail Vanderhoek.”

  She turned to face the voice and found that it came from a machine. Spiders crouched beside it, legs moving silently. Outside, in the hard vacuum, were more spiders.

  “We regret any pain this may cause,” the machine said.

  Then the spiders rushed forward. She had no time to react. Sharp mandibles loomed before her, then dipped to her neck. Impossibly swift, they sliced through her throat, severed her spine. A sudden jerk, and her head was separated from her body.

  It happened in an instant. She felt brief pain, and the dissociation of actually seeing her decapitated body just beginning to react. And then she died.

  ***

  A spark. A light. I’m alive, she thought. Consciousness returned like an ancient cathode tube warming up. Abigail stretched slowly, bobbing gently in the air, collecting her thoughts. She was in the sister-Clotho again, not in pain, her head and neck firmly on her shoulders. There were spiders on the platform, and a few floating outside.

  “Abigail Vanderhoek,” the machine said. “We are ready to begin negotiations.”

  Abigail said nothing.

  After a moment, the machine said, “Are you damaged? Are your thoughts impaired?” A pause, then, “Was your mind not protected during transit?”

  “Is that you waving the legs there? Outside the platform?”

  “Yes. It is important that you talk with the other humans. You must convey our questions. They will not communicate with us.”

  “I have a few questions of my own,” Abigail said. “I won’t cooperate until you answer them.”

  “We will answer any questions provided you neither garble nor garble.”

  “What do you take me for?” Abigail asked. “Of course I won’t.”

  ***

  Long hours later she spoke to Paul and Dominguez. At her request, the spiders had withdrawn, leaving her lone. Dominguez looked drawn and haggard. “I swear we had no idea the spiders would attack you,” Dominguez said. “We saw it on the screens. I was certain you’d been killed…” His voice trailed off.

  “Well, I’m alive, no thanks to you guys. Just what is this crap about an explosive substance in my bones, anyway?”

  “An explosive—I swear we know nothing of anything of the sort.”

  “A close relative to plastique,” Paul said. “I had a small editing device attached to Clotho’s translator. It altered roughly half the bone marrow in your sternum, pelvis and femurs in transmission. I’d hoped the spiders wouldn’t pick up on it so quickly.”

  “You actually did,” Abigail marveled. “The spiders weren’t lying; they decapitated me in self-defense. What the holy hell did you think you were doing?”

  “Just a precaution,” Paul said. “We wetwired you to trigger the stuff on command. That way we could have taken out the spider installation if they’d tried something funny.”

  “Um,” Dominguez said, “this is being recorded. What I’d like to know, Ms. Vanderhoek, is how you escaped being destroyed.”

  “I didn’t,” Abigail said. “The spiders killed me. Fortunately, they anticipated the situation and recorded the transmission. It was easy for them to re-create me—after they edited out the plastique.”

  Dominguez gave her an odd look. “You don’t—feel anything particular about this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well—” He turned to Paul helplessly.

  “Like the real Abigail Vanderhoek died and you’re simply a very realistic copy,” Paul said.

  “Look, we’ve been through this garbage before,” Abigail began angrily.

  Paul smiled formally at Dominguez. It was hard to adjust to seeing the two in flat black-and-white. “She doesn’t believe a word of it.”

  “If you guys can pull yourselves up out of your navels for a minute,” Abigail said, “I’ve got a line on something the spiders have that you want. They claim they’ve sent probes through their black hole.”

  “Probes?” Paul stiffened. Abigail could sense the thoughts coursing through his skull, of defenses and military applications.

  “Carbon-hydrogen chain probes. Organic probes. Self-constructing transmitters. They’ve got a carbon-based secondary technology.”

  “Nonsense,” Dominguez said. “How could they convert back to coherent matter without a receiver?”

  Abigail shrugged. “They claim to have found a loophole.”

  “How does it work?” Paul snapped.

  “They wouldn’t say. They seemed to think you’d pay well for it.”

  “That’s very true,” Paul said slowly. “Oh, yes.”

  The conference took almost as long as her session with the spiders had. Abigail was bone weary when Dominguez finally said, “That ties up the official minutes. We now stop recording.” A line tracked across the screen, was gone. “If you want to speak to anyone off the record, now’s your chance. Perhaps there is someone close to you…”

  “Close? No.” Abigail almost laughed. “I’ll speak to Paul alone, though.”

  A spider floated by outside Clotho II. It was a golden crablike being, its body slightly opalescent. It skittered along unseen threads strung between the open platforms of the spider star-city. “I’m listening,” Paul said.

  “You turned me into a bomb, you freak.”

  “So?”

  “I could have been kil
led.”

  “Am I supposed to care?”

  “You damn well ought to, considering the liberties you’ve taken with my fair white body.”

  “Let’s get one thing understood,” Paul said. “The woman I slept with, the woman I cared for, is dead. I have no feelings toward or obligations to you whatsoever.”

  “Paul,” Abigail said. “I’m not dead. Believe me, I’d know if I were.”

  “How could I possibly trust what you think or feel? It could all be attitudes the spiders wetwired into you. We know they have the technology.”

  “How do you know that your attitudes aren’t wetwired in? For that matter, how do you know anything is real? I mean, these are the most sophomoric philosophic questions there are. But I’m the same woman I was a few hours ago. My memories, opinions, feelings—they’re all the same as they were. There’s absolutely no difference between me and the woman you slept with on the Clarke.”

  “I know.” Paul’s eyes were cold. “That’s the horror of it.” He snapped off the screen.

  Abigail found herself staring at the lifeless machinery. God, that hurt, she thought. It shouldn’t, but it hurt. She went to her quarters.

  The spiders had done a respectable job of preparing for her. There were no green plants, but otherwise the room was the same as the one she’d had on the Clarke. They’d even been able to spin the platform, giving her an adequate down-orientation. She sat in her hammock, determined to think pleasanter thoughts. About the offer the spiders had made, for example. The one she hadn’t told Paul and Dominguez about.

  Banned by their chemistry from using black holes to travel, the spiders needed a representative to see to their interests among the stars. They had offered her the job.

  Or perhaps the plural would be more appropriate—they had offered her the jobs. Because there were too many places to go for one woman to handle them all. They needed a dozen, in time perhaps a hundred Abigail Vanderhoeks.

  In exchange for licensing rights to her personality, the right to make as many duplicates of her as were needed, they were willing to give her the rights to the self-reconstructing black-hole platforms.