Before They Were Giants

by James L. Sutter

  Cheyney looped the tug around the communications net trailing the Clarke. Kilometers of steel lace passed beneath them. He pointed out a small dish antenna on the edge and a cluster of antennae on the back. “The loner on the edge transmits into Ginungagap,” he said. “The others relay information to and from Mother.”

  “Mother?”

  “That’s the traditional name for the Arthur C. Clarke.” He swung the tug about with a careless sweep of one arm, and launched into a long and scurrilous story about the origin of the nickname. Abigail laughed, and Cheyney pointed a finger. “There’s Ginungagap.”

  Abigail peered intently. “Where? I don’t see a thing.” She glanced at the second wraparound insert, which displayed a magnified view of the black hole. It wasn’t at all impressive: a red smear against black nothingness. In the star-field it was all but invisible.

  “Disappointing, hey? But still dangerous. Even this far out, there’s a lot of ionization from the accretion disk.”

  “Is that why there’s a lip station?”

  “Yeah. Particle concentration varies, but if the translator was right at the Clarke, we’d probably lose about a third of the passengers.”

  Cheyney dropped Abigail off at Mother’s crew lock and looped the tug off and away. Abigail wondered where to go, what to do now.

  “You’re the gravity bum we’re dumping down Ginungagap.” The short, solid man was upon her before she saw him. His eyes were intense. His cache-sexe was a conservative orange. “I liked the stunt with the arm. It takes a lot of guts to do something like that.” He pumped her arm. “I’m Paul Girard. Head of external security. In charge of your training. You play verbal Ping Pong?”

  “Why do you ask?” she countered automatically.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Should I?”

  “Do you mean now or later?”

  “Will the answer be different later?”

  A smile creased Paul’s solid face. “You’ll do.” He took her arm, led her along a sloping corridor. “There isn’t much prep time. The dry run is scheduled in two weeks. Things will move pretty quickly after that. You want to start your training now?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Abigail asked, amused.

  Paul came to a dead stop. “Listen,” he said. “Rule number one: don’t play games with me. You understand? Because I always win. Not sometimes, not usually—always.”

  Abigail yanked her arm free. “You maneuvered me into that,” she said angrily.

  “Consider it part of your training.” He stared directly into her eyes. “No matter how many gravity wells you’ve climbed down, you’re still the product of a near-space culture—protected, trusting, willing to take things at face value. This is a dangerous attitude, and I want you to realize it. I want you to learn to look behind the mask of events. I want you to grow up. And you will.”

  Don’t be so sure. A small smile quirked Paul’s face as if he could read her thoughts. Aloud, Abigail said, “That sounds a little excessive for a trip to Proxima.”

  “Lesson number two,” Paul said: “don’t make easy assumptions. You’re not going to Proxima.” He led her outward-down the ramp to the next wheel, pausing briefly at the juncture to acclimatize to the slower rate of revolution. “You’re going to visit spiders.” He gestured. “The crew room is this way.”

  ~ * ~

  The crew room was vast and cavernous, twilight gloomy, Keyouts were set up along winding paths that wandered aimlessly through the work space. Puddles of light fell on each board and operator. Dark-loving foliage was set between the keyouts.

  “This is the heart of the beast,” Paul said. “The green keyouts handle all Proxima communications—pretty routine by now. But the blue ...” His eyes glinting oddly, he pointed. Over the keyouts hung silvery screens with harsh, grainy images floating on their surfaces, black-and-white blobs that Abigail could not resolve into recognizable forms.

  “Those,” Paul said, “are the spiders. We’re talking to them in real-time. Response delay is almost all due to machine translation.”

  In a sudden shift of perception, the blobs became arachnid forms. That mass of black fluttering across the screen was a spider leg and that was its thorax. Abigail felt an immediate, primal aversion, and then it was swept away by an all-encompassing wonder.

  “Aliens?” she breathed.

  “Aliens.”

  They actually looked no more like spiders than humans looked like apes. The eight legs had an extra joint each, and the mandible configuration was all wrong. But to an untrained eye they would do.

  “But this is—How long have you—? Why in God’s name are you keeping this a secret?” An indefinable joy arose in Abigail. This opened a universe of possibilities, as if after a lifetime of being confined in a box someone had removed the lid.

  “Industrial security,” Paul said. “The gadget that’ll send you through Ginungagap to their black hole is a spider invention. We’re trading optical data for it, but the law won’t protect our rights until we’ve demonstrated its use. We don’t want the other corporations cutting in.” He nodded toward the nearest black-and-white screen. “As you can see, they’re weak on optics.”

  “I’d love to talk . . .”Abigail’s voice trailed off as she realized how little-girl hopeful she sounded.

  “I’ll arrange an introduction.”

  There was a rustling to Abigail’s side. She turned and saw a large black tomcat with white boots and belly emerge from the bushes. “This is the esteemed head of Alien Communications,” Paul said sourly.

  Abigail started to laugh, then choked in embarrassment as she realized that he was not speaking of the cat. “Julio Dominguez, section chief for translation,” Paul said. “Abigail Vanderhoek, gravity specialist.”

  The wizened old man smiled professorially. “I assume our resident gadfly has explained how the communications net works, has he not?”

  “Well—” Abigail began.

  Dominguez clucked his tongue. He wore a yellow cache-sexe and matching bow tie, just a little too garish for a man his age. “Quite simple, actually. Escape velocity from a black hole is greater than the speed of light. Therefore, within Ginungagap the speed of light is no longer the limit to the speed of communications.”

  He paused just long enough for Abigail to look baffled. “Which is just a stuffy way of saying that when we aim a stream of electrons into the boundary of the stationary limit, they emerge elsewhere—out of another black hole. And if we aim them just so”—his voice rose whimsically—”they’ll emerge from the black hole of our choosing. The physics is simple. The finesse is in aiming the electrons.”

  The cat stalked up to Abigail, pushed its forehead against her leg, and mewed insistently. She bent over and picked it up. “But nothing can emerge from a black hole,” she objected.

  Dominguez chuckled. “Ah, but anything can fall in, hey? A positron can fall in. But a positron falling into Ginungagap in positive time is only an electron falling out in negative time. Which means that a positron falling into a black hole in negative time is actually an electron falling out in positive time—exactly the effect we want. Think of Ginungagap as being the physical manifestation of an equivalence sign in mathematics.”

  “Oh,” Abigail said, feeling very firmly put in her place. White moths flittered along the path. The cat watched, fascinated, while she stroked its head.

  “At any rate, the electrons do emerge, and once the data are in, the theory has to follow along meekly.”

  “Tell me about the spiders,” Abigail said before he could continue. The moths were darting up, sideward, down, a chance ballet in three dimensions.

  “The aliens,” Dominguez said, frowning at Paul, “are still a mystery to us. We exchange facts, descriptions, recipes for tools, but the important questions do not lend themselves to our clumsy mathematical codes. Do they know of love? Do they appreciate beauty? Do they believe in God, hey?”

  “Do they want to eat us?” Paul threw in. “Don’
t be ridiculous,” Dominguez snapped. “Of course they don’t.”

  The moths parted when they came to Abigail. Two went to either side; one flew over her shoulder. The cat batted at it with one paw. “The cat’s name is Garble,” Paul said. “The kids in Bio cloned him up.”

  Dominguez opened his mouth, closed it again.

  Abigail scratched Garble under the chin. He arched his neck and purred all but noiselessly. “With your permission,” Paul said. He stepped over to a keyout and waved its operator aside.

  “Technically you’re supposed to speak a convenience language, but if you keep it simple and non-idiomatic, there shouldn’t be any difficulty.” He touched the keyout. “Ritual greetings, spider.” There was a blank pause. Then the spider moved, a hairy leg flickering across the screen.

  “Hello, human.”

  “Introductions: Abigail Vanderhoek. She is our representative. She will ride the spinner.” Another pause. More leg waving.

  “Hello, Abigail Vanderhoek. Transition of vacuum garble resting garble commercial benefits garble still point in space.”

  “Tricky translation,” Paul said. He signed to Abigail to take over.

  Abigail hesitated, then said, “Will you come to visit us? The way we will visit you?”

  “No, you see—” Dominguez began, but Paul waved him to silence.

  “No, Abigail Vanderhoek. We are sulfur-based life.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “You can garble black hole through garble spinner because you are carbon-based life. Carbon forms chains easily but sulfur combines in lattices or rosettes. Our garble simple form garble. Sometimes sulfur forms short chains.”

  “We’ll explain later,” Paul said. “Go on, you’re doing fine.”

  Abigail hesitated again. What do you say to a spider, anyway? Finally, she asked, “Do you want to eat us?”

  “Oh, Christ, get her off that thing,” Dominguez said, reaching for the keyout.

  Paul blocked his arm. “No,” he said. “I want to hear this.”

  Several of the spider legs wove intricate patterns. “The question is false. Sulfur-based life derives no benefit from eating carbon-based life.”

  “You see,” Dominguez said.

  “But if it were possible,” Abigail persisted. “If you could eat us and derive benefit. Would you?”

  “Yes, Abigail Vanderhoek. With great pleasure.”

  Dominguez pushed her aside. “We’re terribly sorry,” he said to the alien. “This is a horrible, horrible misunderstanding. You!” he shouted to the operator. “Get back on and clear this mess up.”

  Paul was grinning wickedly. “Come,” he said to Abigail. “We’ve accomplished enough here for one day.”

  As they started to walk away, Garble twisted in Abigail’s arms and leaped free. He hit the floor on all fours and disappeared into the greenery. “Would they really eat us?” Abigail asked. Then amended it to, “Does that mean they’re hostile?”

  Paul shrugged. “Maybe they thought we’d be insulted if they didn’t offer to eat us.” He led her to her quarters. “Tomorrow we start training for real. In the meantime, you might make up a list of all the ways the spiders could hurt us if we set up transportation and they are hostile. Then another list of all the reasons we shouldn’t trust them.” He paused. “I’ve done it myself. You’ll find that the lists get rather extensive.”

  ~ * ~

  Abigail’s quarters weren’t flashy, but they fit her well. A full star field was routed to the walls, floor, and ceiling, only partially obscured by a trellis inner frame that supported fox-grape vines. Somebody had done research into her tastes.

  “Hi.” The cheery greeting startled her. She whirled, saw that her hammock was occupied.

  Cheyney sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the hammock, causing it to rock lightly. “Come on in.” He touched an invisible control and the star field blue-shifted down to a deep, erotic purple.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing here?” Abigail asked.

  “I had a few hours free,” Cheyney said, “so I thought I’d drop by and seduce you.”

  “Well, Cheyney, I appreciate your honesty,” Abigail said. “So I won’t say no.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll say maybe some other time. Now get lost. I’m tired.”

  “Okay.” Cheyney hopped down, walked jauntily to the door. He paused. “You said ‘Later,’ right?”

  “I said maybe later.”

  “Later. Gotcha.” He winked and was gone.

  Abigail threw herself into the hammock, red-shifted the star field until the universe was a sparse smattering of dying embers. Annoying creature! There was no hope for anything more than the most superficial of relationships with him. She closed her eyes, smiled. Fortunately, she wasn’t currently in the market for a serious relationship.

  She slept.

  ~ * ~

  She was falling ...

  Abigail had landed the ship an easy walk from 3M’s robot laboratory. The lab’s geodesic dome echoed white clouds to the north, where Nix Olympus peeked over the horizon. Otherwise all—land, sky, rocks—was standard issue Martian orange. She had clambered to the ground and shrugged on the supply backpack.

  Resupplying 3M-RL stations was a gut contract, easy but dull. So perhaps she was less cautious than usual going down the steep, rock-strewn hillside, or perhaps the rock would have turned under her no matter how carefully she placed her feet. Her ankle twisted and she lurched sideways, but the backpack had shifted her center of gravity too much for her to be able to recover.

  Arms windmilling, she fell.

  The rock slide carried her downhill in a panicky flurry of dust and motion, tearing her flesh and splintering her bones. But before she could feel pain, her suit shot her full of a nerve synesthetic, translating sensation into colors—reds, russets, and browns, with staccato yellow spikes when a rock smashed into her ribs. So that she fell in a whirling rainbow of glorious light.

  She came to rest in a burst of orange. The rocks were settling about her. A spume of dust drifted away, out toward the distant red horizon. A large, jagged slab of stone slid by, gently shearing off her backpack. Tools, supplies, airpacks flew up and softly rained down.

  A spanner as long as her arm slammed down inches from Abigail’s helmet. She flinched, and suddenly events became real. She kicked her legs and sand and dust fountained up. Drawing her feet under her body—the one ankle bright gold-—she started to stand.

  And was jerked to the ground by a sudden tug on one arm. Even as she turned her head, she became aware of a deep purple sensation in her left hand. It was pinioned to a rock not quite large enough to stake a claim to. There was no color in the fingers.

  “Cute,” she muttered. She tugged at the arm, pushed at the rock. Nothing budged.

  Abigail nudged the radio switch with her chin. “Grounder to Lip Station,” she said. She hesitated, feeling foolish, then said, “Mayday. Repeat, Mayday. Could you guys send a rescue party down for me?”

  There was no reply. With a sick green feeling in the pit of her stomach, Abigail reached a gloved hand around the back of her helmet. She touched something jagged, a sensation of mottled rust, the broken remains of her radio, “I think I’m in trouble.” She said it aloud and listened to the sound of it. Flat, unemotional—probably true. But nothing to get panicky about.

  She took quick stock of what she had to work with. One intact suit and helmet. One spanner. A worldful of rocks, many close at hand. Enough air for—she checked the helmet readout—almost an hour. Assuming the Up station ran its checks on schedule and was fast on the uptake, she had almost half the air she needed.

  Most of the backpack’s contents were scattered too far away to reach. One rectangular gaspack, however, had landed nearby. She reached for it but could not touch it, squinted but could not read the label on its nozzle. It was almost certainly liquid gas—either nitrogen or oxygen—for the robot lab. There was a slim chance it was the spare a
irpack. If it was, she might live to be rescued. Abigail studied the landscape carefully, but there was nothing more. “Okay, then, it’s an airpack.” She reached as far as her tethered arm would allow. The gaspack remained a tantalizing centimeter out of reach.

  For an instant she was stymied. Then, feeling like an idiot, she grabbed the spanner. She hooked it over the gas-pack. Felt the gaspack move grudgingly. Slowly nudged it toward herself.