Before They Were Giants

by James L. Sutter

  ~ * ~

  There was a festive air to the second gathering. The spiders reported that Garble had translated flawlessly. A brief visual display showed him stalking about Clotho’s sister platform, irritable but apparently unharmed.

  “There,” somebody said. The screen indicated that the receiver net had taken in the running end of the cat’s polymer chain. They waited a minute and a half and the operation was over.

  It was like a conjuring trick: the clamshell closed on emptiness. Water was piped in. Then it opened and Garble floated over its center, quietly licking one paw.

  Abigail smiled at the homeliness of it. “Welcome back, Garble,” she said quietly. “I’ll get the guys in Bio to brew up some cream for you,”

  Paul’s eyes flicked in her direction. They lingered for no time at all, long enough to file away another datum for future use, and then his attention was elsewhere. She waited until his back was turned and stuck out her tongue at him.

  The tub docked with Clotho and a technician floated in. She removed her helmet self-consciously, aware of her audience. One hand extended, she bobbed toward the cat, calling softly.

  “Get that jerk on the line,” Paul snapped. “I want her helmet back on. That’s sloppy. That’s real—”

  And in that instant Garble sprang.

  Garble was a black-and-white streak that flashed past the astonished tech, through the air lock, and into the open tug. The cat pounced on the pilot panel. Its forelegs hit the controls. The hatch slammed shut, and the tug’s motors burst into life.

  Crew room techs grabbed wildly at their keyouts. The tech on Clotho frantically tried to fit her helmet back on. And the tug took off, blasting away half the protective dome and all the platform’s air.

  The screens showed a dozen different scenes, lenses shifting from close to distant and back. “Cheyney,” Paul said quietly. Dominguez was frozen, looking bewildered. “Take it out.”

  “It’s coming right at us!” somebody shouted.

  Cheyney’s fingers flicked: rap-tap-rap.

  A bright nuclear flower blossomed.

  There was silence, dead and complete, in the crew room. I’m missing something, Abigail thought. We just blew up 5 percent of our tug fleet to kill a cat.

  “Pull that transmitter!” Paul strode through the crew room, scattering orders. “Nothing goes out! You, you, and you”—he yanked techs away from their keyouts—”off those things. I want the whole goddamned net shut down.”

  “Paul . . .” an operator said.

  “Keep on receiving.” He didn’t bother to look. “Whatever they want to send. Dump it all in storage and don’t merge any of it with our data until we’ve gone over it.” Alone and useless in the center of the room, Dominguez stuttered, “What—what happened?”

  “You blind idiot!” Paul turned on him viciously. “Your precious aliens have just made their first hostile move. The cat that came back was nothing like the one we sent. They made changes. They retransmitted it with instructions wet-wired into its brain.”

  “But why would they want to steal a tug?”

  “We don’t know!” Paul roared. “Get that through your head. We don’t know their motives and we don’t know how they think. But we would have known a lot more about their intentions than we wanted if I hadn’t rigged that tug with an abort device.”

  “You didn’t—” Dominguez began. He thought better of the statement.

  “—have the authority to rig that device,” Paul finished for him. “That’s right. I didn’t.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  Dominguez seemed to shrivel. He stared bleakly, blankly, about him, then turned and left, slightly hunched over. Thoroughly discredited in front of the people who worked for him.

  That was cold, Abigail thought. She marveled at Paul’s cruelty. Not for an instant did she believe that the anger in his voice was real, that he was capable of losing control.

  Which meant that in the midst of confusion and stress, Paul had found time to make a swift play for more power. To Abigail’s newly suspicious eye, it looked like a successful one, too.

  ~ * ~

  For five days Paul held the net shut by sheer willpower and force of personality. Information came in but did not go out. Bell-Sandia administration was not behind him; too much time and money had been sunk into Clotho to abandon the project. But Paul had the support of the tech crew, and he knew how to use it.

  “Nothing as big as Bell-Sandia runs on popularity,” Paul explained. “But I’ve got enough sympathy from above, and enough hesitation and official cowardice to keep this place shut down long enough to get a message across.”

  The incoming information flow fluctuated wildly, shifting from subject to subject. Data sequences were dropped halfway through and incomplete. Nonsense came in. The spiders were shifting through strategies in search of the key that would reopen the net.

  “When they start repeating themselves,” Paul said, “we can assume they understand the threat.”

  “But we wouldn’t shut the net down permanently,” Abigail pointed out.

  Paul shrugged. “So it’s a bluff.”

  They were sharing an after-shift drink in a fifth-level bar. Small red lizards scuttled about the rock wall behind the bartender. “And if your bluff doesn’t work?” Abigail asked. “If it’s all for nothing—what then?”

  Paul’s shoulders sagged, a minute shifting of tensions. “Then we trust in the goodwill of the spiders,” he said. “We let them call the shots. And they will treat us benevolently or not, depending. In either case,” his voice became dark, “I’ll have played a lot of games and manipulated a lot of people for no reason at all.” He took her hand. “If that happens, I’d like to apologize.” His grip was tight, his knuckles pale.

  ~ * ~

  That night Abigail dreamed she was falling.

  Light rainbowed all about her, in a violent splintering of bone and tearing of flesh. She flung out an arm and it bounced on something warm and yielding.

  “Abigail.”

  She twisted and tumbled and something smashed into her ribs. Bright spikes of yellow darted up.

  “Abigail!” Someone was shaking her, speaking loudly into her face. The rocks and sky went gray, were overlaid by unresolved images. Her eyelids struggled apart, fell together, opened.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Paul rocked back on his heels. Fish darted about in the water beneath him. “There now,” he said.” Blue-green lights shifted gently underwater, moving in long, slow arcs. “Dream over?”

  Abigail shivered, clutched his arm, let go of it almost immediately. She nodded. “Good. Tell me about it.”

  “I—” Abigail began. “Are you asking me as a human being or in your official capacity?”

  “I don’t make that distinction.”

  She stretched out a leg and scratched her big toe, to gain time to think. She really didn’t have any appropriate thoughts. “Okay,” she said, and told him the entire dream. Paul listened intently, rubbed a thumb across his chin thoughtfully when she was done. “We hired you on the basis of that incident, you know,” he said. “Coolness under stress. Weak body image. There were a lot of gravity bums to choose from. But I figured you were just a hair tougher, a little bit grittier.”

  “What are you trying to tell me? That I’m replaceable?”

  Paul shrugged. “Everybody’s replaceable. I just wanted to be sure you knew that you could back out if you want. It wouldn’t wreck our project.”

  “I don’t want to back out.” Abigail chose her words carefully, spoke them slowly, to avoid giving vent to the anger she felt building up inside. “Look, I’ve been on the gravity circuit for ten years. I’ve been everywhere in the system there is to go: Did you know that there are less than two thousand people alive who’ve set foot on Mercury and Pluto? We’ve got a little club; we get together once a year.” Seaweed shifted about her; reflections of the floor lights formed nebulous swimming shapes on the walls. “I’ve spent my entire lif
e going around and around and around the sun, and never really getting anywhere. I want to travel, and there’s nowhere left for me to go. So you offer me a way out and then ask if I want to back down. Like hell I do !”

  “Why don’t you believe that going through Ginungagap is death?” Paul asked quietly. She looked into his eyes, saw cool calculations going on behind them. It frightened her, almost. He was measuring her, passing judgment, warping events into long logical chains that did not take human factors into account. He was an alien presence.

  “It’s—common sense, is all. I’ll be the same when I exit as when I go in. There’ll be no difference, not an atom’s worth, not a scintilla.”

  “The substance will be different. Every atom will be different. Not a single electron in your body will be the same one you have now.”

  “Well, how does that differ so much from normal life?” Abigail demanded. “All our bodies are in constant flux. Molecules come and go. Bit by bit, we’re replaced. Does that make us different people from moment to moment? ‘All that is body is as coursing vapors,’ right?”

  Paul’s eyes narrowed. “Marcus Aurelius. Your quotation isn’t complete, though. It goes on: ‘All that Is of the soul is dreams and vapors.’ “

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that the quotation doesn’t say what you claimed it did. If you care to read it literally, it argues the opposite of what you’re saying.”

  “Still, you can’t have it both ways. Either the me that comes out of the spider black hole is the same as the one who went in, or I’m not the same person as I was an instant ago.”

  “I’d argue differently,” Paul said. “But no matter. Let’s go back to sleep.”

  He held out a hand, but Abigail felt no inclination to accept it. “Does this mean I’ve passed your test?”

  Paul closed his eyes, stretched a little. “You’re still reasonably afraid of dying, and you don’t believe that you will,” he said. “Yeah. You pass.”

  “Thanks a heap,” Abigail said. They slept, not touching, for the rest of the night.

  ~ * ~

  Three days later Abigail woke up, and Paul was gone. She touched the wall and spoke his name. A recording appeared. “Dominguez has been called up to Administration,” it said. Paul appeared slightly distracted; he had not looked directly into the recorder and his image avoided Abigail’s eyes. “I’m going to reopen the net before he returns. It’s best we beat him to the punch.” The recording clicked off.

  Abigail routed an intercom call through to the crew room. 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.”

  “This 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 the background, 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 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 re-ran 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 hands behind 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 was another test, the final one. And she also knew that Paul wanted her to fail it. That he honestly believed transversing Ginungagap would kill her, and that the woman who emerged
from the spiders’ black hole would not be herself.

  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 as Paul 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 so test her. 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.