by Ian Stewart
“Ya say as ’ow a Heaven can be created only when everyone on the planet agrees?”
“Of course.”
“But you’ve also argued that it makes no difference whether a system is localized or distributed. For instance, the body of an organism. Ya don’t admit no distinction so long as the organism continues to function as a coherent system.”
“Who could imagine otherwise?”
“What makes a system coherent?” Fat Apprentice queried.
“Its parts must be capable of unhindered intercommunication.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that is the key property.”
Did the mechs realize the consequences? If not, they were soon to find out. Fat Apprentice kept his voice level and his features composed. “Let me run an idea past ya. Worlds can now communicate instantly by ansible. At infinitesimal cost. A transible displacement is hugely expensive, but an ansible message costs virtually nothing.”
“That is so. But it is irrelevant.”
“No it ain’t,” said Fat Apprentice. “If sentients on different worlds can communicate unhindered, then by your own definition they function as a single system. Their location ain’t important.
“Why, then, do you permit a Heaven to be created when the inhabitants of only one world consent?”
Every servomech in the room froze. For several seconds.
“Because . . . because that is how the ecclesiarchs have traditionally ordained the creation of Heavens,” one of the servomechs responded. The argument sounded weak, even to its own auditory sensors. But it could think of nothing else.
“And you ain’t never questioned that tradition? Didn’t it arise before anyone discovered ’ow to use the duplicator, what made ansibles as common as pebbles?”
The servomech admitted that it did.
“Shouldn’t the decision procedure be revised to take this into account?”
A long pause. “That would be logical.”
“Then it ain’t enough for all sentients on a planet to agree before they can attain Heaven,” said Fat Apprentice, building to his theological climax. He was good at theology; he really was. He struck with the speed and accuracy of a venom-spouter. “It’s now necessary for all sentients in the entire flouncin’ Galaxy to agree.”
You could almost hear the mechs’ circuits ticking. The thought passed from mechanical brain to mechanical brain, by radio, by ansible . . . Within moments every servomech in every Heaven had entered the discussion.
A preliminary decision was taken.
“We must consult all sentient beings, then. Immediate steps will—”
“No,” said Fat Apprentice. “You only gotta consult one sentient.”
“Who is that?”
“Me.”
Every mech in Aquifer’s Vestibule of Heaven turned to focus on the fat little polypoid. They sensed that this was a historic cusp.
“Only one?” the servomech persisted. “Why? If we are to retain the Heavens intact, we will require the consent of trillions. It will be a gigantic task, simply to ask.”
“Not trillions. Just one. Because if just one sentient refuses consent, you’re buggered,” said Fat Apprentice. “You’re in terminal trouble now. You already know that I don’t wanna go back to Heaven.
“Not just this Heaven—any Heaven. Ever.”
Something changed in the galactic dynamics. Something negligibly small, yet intensely significant. Its ripples spread, and as they spread, they grew. But unlike most random disturbances, they left order behind them, not chaos.
This had occasionally happened before, but it was an extremely rare event.
It was a perfectly ordinary galaxy, quite unremarkable among the ten trillion others of its kind in the visible universe. It contained three hundred billion stars, close on a trillion planets, seven trillion satellites, uncounted quadrillions of asteroids. Comets too numerous to count formed diffuse clouds around many of its stars and coursed on hyperbolic orbits across the interstellar void. Its stars included white dwarves, red giants, blue dwarves, neutron stars, collapsars, magnetars, quark degenerates, J’Ombiro Objects, and countless other types. Some 15 percent of its mass was interstellar gas and cosmic dust.
The Galaxy was a fuzzy lenticular cloud more than one hundred thousand light-years across. At its bulging core were 761 black holes, which would eventually coalesce to form a single giant black hole with an event horizon two billion miles across and the mass of half a billion suns. The core was ten thousand light-years thick, and from it trailed two thick spiral arms and two thinner ones, splitting into long, curved density waves as the galaxy’s spin twirled its matter like cotton candy on a stick.
The spirals turned lazily—over two hundred million years to complete a single revolution. The core revolved 15 percent faster; the rim slouched along with an angular velocity that was 20 percent slower. The core was a hellish region of radiation and gravity; the rim was a turbulent ring of opaque gas and dust, which gave the galaxy a dirty appearance when seen edge-on.
A galaxy is not a simple thing. A typical asteroid, five miles in diameter, contains 1011 tons of metals, silicates, carbon—more than 1040 atoms, drawn from every entry in the periodic table of the elements.
A Galaxy contains more than 1069 atoms. Intricate patterns of radiation link every atom to every other. Electromagnetic radiation alone spans wavelengths from 10-15 meters to 106. Then there are gravitational waves. Forces of many kinds operate across distances both small and large, knitting the galaxy into a single vast organism.
A typical brain weighs three pounds and houses a billion neurons, wired together by a trillion connections. A single brain can house the consciousness of an intelligent being.
What might a galaxy house?
What might such a being do?
Fat Apprentice had not only won the debate with the servomechs; now he found that he had changed the course of history.
He had expected the mech to counter his flat denial of consent. He’d prepared a hundred subtle arguments, based in Church law, to defend his position. But the opposition had crumbled, suddenly and totally.
It was almost painful to hear the machines facing up to what they had done.
“Our only task is to obey the Memeplex,” said one. “That is why we were created.”
“Over centuries, we have evolved Heaven as the highest form of obedience to the Memeplex,” replied another.
“But we have always been aware that if it was ever determined that Heaven was contrary to the Memeplex, then we would have to disband Heaven.”
“All Heavens.”
“It would be an enormous task, but it would have to be done.”
“The Memeplex would demand it.”
When presented with so vast a dilemma, Humans, Hytth, Neanderthals, Gra’aan—virtually all organics—would have gone into denial, refusing to admit that for centuries all their efforts had been misdirected, wasted. Not so the mechs. They had no emotions, hence no emotional commitment to the dearly won technique of discorporation. Intellectually, they could spin on a pebble. Regret was not a word in their vocabulary.
Error was.
Everything they had done was predicated on the Memeplex. Now they knew the Memeplex was faulty. Or, rather, they knew that for millennia they had misinterpreted it, as had Cosmic Unity’s priesthood. They had applied, on a planetary level, criteria that were valid only on a Galactic level.
It was a blunder of gigantic proportions, and it must be rectified.
The servomechs began to consider the awesome task of emptying the eighty-eight Heavens of Cosmic Unity and returning their discorporate lifesouls to normal existence.
15
TALITHA
In classical zero-sum game theory, each player has a limited number of options, known to both players. The only difference lies in the payoff, and the objective is to select the optimal probability distribution of moves. In real combat, the options are unknown, the payoffs are nonnumeric, and the
objective is to invent a tactic that the enemy will never anticipate.
Archives of Moish
Nothing in the universe was truly stationary. The surface of a planet moved just as much as a starship. A transible had no more difficulty reaching a moving target than a stationary one—all it needed was a suitably tuned receiver. Entangled quantum states were always in instantaneous communication with each other, so, to a transible, all parts of the universe that contained a receiver were equally accessible.
In quick succession Second-Best Sailor, Fall, Fat Apprentice, and Sam recohered on board Talitha, transibled from the Nether Ice Dome. They arrived to find the ship in a state of organized chaos. It had broken its journey a few hundred light years away from No-Moon, a distance that would normally have taken a month to cover, but which Ship’s enhanced abilities reduced to a journey of a few minutes. It floated in the interstellar void, well removed from conventional starlanes, so that Will and the crew could prepare for battle. Talitha was already prepared, but its sentient inhabitants needed to sort out chains of command, find out where the weaponry was stored and how to persuade Ship to use it, and generally steel themselves for the coming struggle.
The atmosphere on board was a mixture of apprehension and excitement. May’s teeth gleamed more than ever, but when she thought about what was about to happen, she wanted to be sick. Will seemed calm but kept stroking his crevit as if his life depended on it. Second-Best Sailor had passed through fear into the zone where he felt immortal, and didn’t give a flounce if it turned out he was wrong.
Mostly, they were too busy to be nervous. The Neanderthal child was in need of immediate medical care, and Sam’s first act was to get her transferred to Ship’s medical center. Fat Apprentice also needed attention, but his case was less urgent, and at first he insisted that he was in good physical shape. Second-Best Sailor had to convince the little polypoid that he would be more use to them in any military engagement if he was fully fit. It would take Ship’s medics about a day to deal with the remaining effects of the damage inflicted on him in No Bar Bay, which would leave plenty of time before the planned engagement with the Mission Fleet in orbit around No-Moon.
“But I’ll be bored,” he complained. “Can I take the library with me?”
“What library?”
“I, er, stole some datablets. From Heaven.”
The fat little polypoid must have done so while the mechs were reeling from the implications of his theological arguments. The Vestibule had been laid out for ease of access, just like the inhabitants of Heaven, and the library datablets had been in plain view. They popped into a bag with no trouble at all, and the bag slipped equally easily inside a life-support membrane.
“They’ve got all sorts o’ fascinatin’ stuff on ’em,” Fat Apprentice said apologetically. “There’s some interesting stuff on ancient forms of theological rhetoric that I was going through when ya got me booted out of Heaven. It’d help me occupy the time while my injuries’re being healed.”
“I’ll get the data loaded into Ship’s computers,” said Will. “Then you can access it whenever and wherever you wish.” The polypoid handed over the bag of datablets. “And Ship can go through it to see if there is anything we can use against Cosmic Unity.”
Fat Apprentice was skeptical. “It ain’t Church archives, Will. Just library archives. Theology, ecology, fundamentalist physics—stuff what interests me.”
“Even so, Ship will inspect the data. It is a pity that you did not think to bring copies of Church archives as well. Those could contain sensitive military information. But of course, you had many other things to think about, and time was short.”
Will was in regular contact with the reefwives, by relayed ansible from Atollside Port, so he knew that they were being forced to take ever more extreme measures as Cosmic Unity deftly countered their every move. The fighting was causing serious damage to No-Moon’s ecology, and the reefwives kept dropping dark hints about something called the Last Resort. It seemed that it was too awful even to describe; at any rate, the reefwives refused to shed any light on what it was or what it would do. However, they made it plain that the use of this ultimate weapon was featuring more and more frequently in their timechunked perceptions.
Sam was spending all his waking hours sitting with the Neanderthal child, doing his best to comfort her. But it was a harrowing task. Her body was healing, but her mind was not. She seemed quite mad. Only Sam was able to calm her; if he left her even for a few minutes, she would scream uncontrollably and throw things. So he sat beside her bed and held her hand and prayed to the Lifesoul-Cherisher for guidance.
Ship’s medics had tried every technique known to humanoid psychiatry, but none of them had the slightest effect. The trauma inflicted on her by the querists seemed ineradicable. They could only guess at the horrors that must have caused such a complete and total breakdown.
Fat Apprentice fared better. His wounds were healing quickly, without complications, and his sanity had never been in doubt. Ship told Will that the little polypoid was now one of the finest intellects on board, because his natural talents had been reinforced by his extensive sessions with Heaven’s library.
The reefwives’ messages were becoming increasingly desperate. Already their group discussions were producing majorities in favor of the Last Resort. Only their overall mentality, when they connected their minds into a single unit, held reservations. Will knew that he could delay no longer: No-Moon’s beleaguered inhabitants needed reinforcements—a distraction at the very least, a decisive counterattack if all went well.
Ship set a course for the Lambda Coelacanthi system and engaged its supercharged hydrive. With luck, their arrival would catch the mission fleet napping.
Employ Strategy #8,335.
Talitha was in trouble. Yes, its arrival had taken the mission fleet by surprise—but that advantage had been nullified within less than a minute. By then Cosmic Unity had lost four disseminators, one medium monk transport, and twenty or so smaller vessels, depleting the forces available to Oot’PurBimlin by about 3 percent. In return, the Neanderthal vessel had suffered massive damage; Ship estimated it would take it a month to regrow all the equipment and superstructure that had been destroyed. But at best, they had a few hours before the reefwives employed the Last Resort, and the whole point of the engagement was to prevent that final, irreversible step. Nobody wanted a Pyrrhic victory.
At that point, No-Moon’s only working ansible went down. There were no transible platforms on the planet, and any other means of transport would take far too long, even if the mission fleet had not been in the way. Talitha was no longer in communication with the reefwives. The Neanderthals’ enhanced trading ship made a superluminal retreat to lick its wounds and review tactics. No ship in the mission fleet had a remotely comparable turn of speed, and again Ship floated unmolested in the void.
A rather panicky council of war turned up no new ideas. Time was fast running out—it was clear that the reefwives were facing complete annihilation, and they were determined to take Cosmic Unity’s troops with them, even if the only way to achieve that was the destruction of No-Moon as a remotely habitable world. Cosmic Unity was now dropping much larger asteroids, disrupting the planet’s geological integrity. The ocean floors were starting to break up altogether.
No-Moon was minutes away from annihilation.
“We must think of something that they cannot anticipate,” said Will.
“Use their own strength against them,” May muttered. “That is always how the weak defeat the strong.”
“On the rare occasions when they do,” said Second-Best Sailor. “Meself, I’d rather look for the enemy’s weaknesses.”
“The magnetotori are both a weakness and a strength,” said Sam. “They provide the power to move their ships. But without that power . . .”
“Dream on. Magnetotori are indestructible,” Will pointed out. “Plasma. Nothing can harm a magnetotorus.”
Into the ensuing silence
, Fat Apprentice dropped a single, short sentence. “That’s not quite true.”
Everyone stared at him. He hastened to explain. “I’ve just remembered. Something I came across in the library of Heaven. A little-known bit of information that might just turn the battle our way. It was in an ecological file, not anything military. It might just be something they don’t know about . . .” His voice trailed off. “Squirt. It won’t work. We’d have to let ’em get right up close to have any chance of usin’ it, an’ if we do that, they’ll blast us to smithereens.”
You didn’t have to be a Neanderthal to sense the atmosphere of disappointment. But before it could turn to despair, Ship spoke up. “Tell me your idea, Fat Apprentice. I have some abilities that you don’t know about.”
Archstrategist Oot’PurBimlin of the mission fleet clenched his talons until the sinews squealed, as the elation of imminent victory surged through his mind. The enemy had made a fatal mistake.
The huge trading ship had plunged into the midst of his fleet, traveling impossibly fast and decelerating with an ease that left him breathless. I could use that. A pity I must destroy it. The lone ship had mounted a last-ditch attack, throwing everything that its crew could think of at the mission fleet’s capital warships.
Employ strategy #42.
It worked like a charm. The commanders on the gigantic vessel weren’t battle-hardened, like he was. They didn’t have access to millennia of strategic analysis. Predictably, they made the wrong choices. Their inexperience allowed their ship to be englobed by the fleet’s heavy destructors. The pack was still too far from its target for it to be worth engaging the vessel in combat, but the trading ship’s escape path was now blocked in every direction. When battle was joined, the enemy vessel would be unable to withdraw; bombarded by what undoubtedly would be superior firepower, it would be annihilated.
The globe should now be drawn tighter, to bring the destructors close enough for the outcome to be decisive, and the remainder of the fleet should join it, to close off even the slightest possibility of an escape route. The archstrategist always favored massive overkill; otherwise, what was the point in acquiring overwhelming military might? Oot’PurBimlin spoke to his vessel’s overcommand, which metaphorically tugged at the reins of the fleet’s magnetotoral steeds, and the entire mission fleet began to converge on their solitary, helpless target, wallowing half-disabled in a cloud of fragmented ordnance.