The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  If Kalava actually was primitive. Brannock wondered about that.

  It was encouraging to see how competently he went about his tasks, a woodsman as well as a seaman. Having gathered dry sticks and piled them in a pyramid, he set them alight. For this, he took from the pouch at his belt a little hardwood cylinder and piston, a packet of tinder, and a sulfur-tipped sliver. Driven down, the piston heated trapped air to ignite the powder; he dipped his match in, brought it up aflame, and used it to start his fire. Yes, an inventive people. And the woman Ilyandi had an excellent knowledge of naked-eye astronomy. Given the rarity of clear skies, that meant many lifetimes of patient observation, record-keeping, and logic, which must include mathematics comparable to Euclid’s.

  What else?

  While Kalava toasted his meat and ate, Brannock made inquiries. He learned of warlike city-states, their hinterlands divided among clans; periodic folkmoots where the freemen passed laws, tried cases, and elected leaders; an international order of sacerdotes, teachers, healers, and philosophers; aggressively expansive, sometimes piratical commerce; barbarians, erupting out of the ever-growing deserts and wastelands; the grim militarism that the frontier states had evolved in response; an empirical but intensive biological technology, which had bred an amazing variety of specialized plants and animals, including slaves born to muscular strength, moronic wits, and canine obedience … .

  Most of the description emerged as the pair were again traveling. Real conversation was impossible when Brannock wrestled with brush, forded a stream in spate, or struggled up a scree slope. Still, even then they managed an occasional question and answer. Besides, after he had crossed the valley and entered the foothills he found the terrain rugged but less often boggy, the trees and undergrowth thinning out, the air slightly cooling.

  Just the same, Brannock would not have gotten as much as he did, in the short snatches he had, were he merely human. But he was immune to fatigue and breathlessness. He had an enormous data store to draw on. It included his studies of history and anthropology as a young mortal, and gave him techniques for constructing a logic tree and following its best branches—for asking the right, most probably useful questions. What emerged was a bare sketch of Kalava’s world. It was, though, clear and cogent.

  It horrified him.

  Say rather that his Christian Brannock aspect recoiled from the brutality of it. His Wayfarer aspect reflected that this was more or less how humans had usually behaved, and that their final civilization would not have been stable without its pervasive artificial intelligences. His journey continued.

  He broke it to let Kalava rest and flex. From that hill the view swept northward and upward to the mountains. They rose precipitously ahead, gashed, cragged, and sheer where they were not wooded, their tops lost in a leaden sky. Brannock pointed to the nearest, thrust forward out of their wall like a bastion.

  “We are bound yonder,” he said. “On the height is my lord, to whom I must get my news.”

  “Doesn’t he see you here?” asked Kalava.

  Brannock shook his generated image of a head. “No. He might, but the enemy engages him. He does not yet know she is the enemy. Think of her as a sorceress who deceives him with clever talk, with songs and illusions, while her agents go about in the world. My word will show him what the truth is.”

  Would it? Could it, when truth and rightness seemed as formless as the cloud cover?

  “Will she be alert against you?”

  “To some degree. How much, I cannot tell. If I can come near, I can let out a silent cry that my lord will hear and understand. But if her warriors catch me before then, you must go on, and that will be hard. You may well fail and die. Have you the courage?”

  Kalava grinned crookedly. “By now, I’d better, hadn’t I?”

  “If you succeed, your reward shall be boundless.”

  “I own, that’s one wind in my sails. But also—” Kalava paused. “Also,” he finished quietly, “the lady Ilyandi wishes this.”

  Brannock decided not to go into that. He lifted the rolled-up piece of bark he had carried in a lower hand. “The sight of you should break the spell, but here is a message for you to give.”

  As well as he was able, he went on to describe the route, the site, and the module that contained Wayfarer, taking care to distinguish it from everything else around. He was not sure whether the spectacle would confuse Kalava into helplessness, but at any rate the man seemed resolute. Nor was he sure how Kalava could cross half a kilometer of paving—if he could get that far—without Gaia immediately perceiving and destroying him. Maybe Wayfarer would notice first. Maybe, maybe.

  He, Brannock, was using this human being as consciencelessly as ever Gaia might have used any; and he did not know what his purpose was. What possible threat to the fellowship of the stars could exist, demanding that this little brief life be offered up? Nevertheless he gave the letter to Kalava, who tucked it inside his tunic.

  “I’m ready,” said the man, and squirmed back into harness. They traveled on.

  The hidden hot sun stood at midafternoon when Brannock’s detectors reacted. He felt it as the least quivering hum, but instantly knew it for the electronic sign of something midge-size approaching afar. A mobile minisensor was on his trail.

  It could not have the sensitivity of the instruments in him, he had not yet registered, but it would be here faster than he could run, would see him and go off to notify stronger machines. They could not be distant either. Once a clue to him had been obtained, they would have converged from across the continent, perhaps across the globe.

  He slammed to a halt. He was in a ravine where a waterfall foamed down into a stream that tumbled off to join the Remnant. Huge, feathery bushes and trees with serrated bronzy leaves enclosed him. Insects droned from flower to purple flower. His chemosensors drank heavy perfumes.

  “The enemy scouts have found me,” he said. “Go.”

  Kalava scrambled free and down to the ground but hesitated, hand on sword. “Can I fight beside you?”

  “No. Your service is to bear my word. Go. Straightaway. Cover your trail as best you can. And your gods be with you.”

  “Lord!”

  Kalava vanished into the brush. Brannock stood alone.

  The human fraction of him melted into the whole and he was entirely machine life, logical, emotionally detached, save for his duty to Wayfarer, Alpha, and consciousness throughout the universe. This was not a bad place to defend, he thought. He had the ravine wall to shield his back, rocks at its foot to throw, branches to break off for clubs and spears. He could give the pursuit a hard time before it took him prisoner. Of course, it might decide to kill him with an energy beam, but probably it wouldn’t. Best from Gaia’s viewpoint was to capture him and change his memories, so that he returned with a report of an uneventful cruise on which he saw nothing of significance.

  He didn’t think that first her agents could extract his real memories. That would take capabilities she had never anticipated needing. Just to make the device that had tried to take control of him earlier must have been an extraordinary effort, hastily carried out. Now she was still more limited in what she could do. An order to duplicate and employ the device was simple enough that it should escape Wayfarer’s notice. The design and commissioning of an interrogator was something else—not to mention the difficulty of getting the information clandestinely to her.

  Brannock dared not assume she was unaware he had taken Kalava with him. Most likely it was a report from an agent, finally getting around to checking on the lifeboat party, that apprised her of his survival and triggered the hunt for him. But the sailors would have been frightened, bewildered, their talk disjointed and nearly meaningless. Ilyandi, that bright and formidable woman, would have done her best to forbid them saying anything helpful. The impression ought to be that Brannock only meant to pump Kalava about his people, before releasing him to make his way back to them and himself proceeding on toward Mindhome.

  In any even
t, it would not be easy to track the man down. He was no machine, he was an animal among countless animals, and the most cunning of all. The kind of saturation search that would soon find him was debarred. Gaia might keep a tiny portion of her forces searching and a tiny part of her attention poised against him, but she would not take him very seriously. Why should she?

  Why should Brannock? Forlorn hope in truth.

  He made his preparations. While he waited for the onslaught, his spirit ranged beyond the clouds, out among the stars and the millions of years that his greater self had known.

  10

  The room was warm. It smelled of lovemaking and the roses Laurinda had set in a vase. Evening light diffused through gauzy drapes to wash over a big four-poster bed.

  She drew herself close against Christian where he lay propped on two pillows. Her arm went across his breast, his over her shoulders. “I don’t want to leave this,” she whispered.

  “Nor I,” he said into the tumbling sweetness of her hair. “How could I want to?”

  “I mean—what we are—what we’ve become to one another.”

  “I understand.”

  She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Can you forget I did?”

  “Why?”

  “You know. I can’t ask you to give up returning to your whole being. I don’t ask you to.”

  He stared before him.

  “I just don’t want to leave this house, this bed yet,” she said desolately. “After these past days and nights, not yet.”

  He turned his head again and looked down into gray eyes that blinked back tears. “Nor I,” he answered. “But I’m afraid we must.”

  “Of course. Duty.”

  And Gaia and Wayfarer. If they didn’t know already that their avatars had been slacking, surely she, at least, soon would, through the amulets and their link to her. No matter how closely engaged with the other vast mind, she would desire to know from time to time what was going on within herself.

  Christian drew breath. “Let me say the same that you did. I, this I that I am, damned well does not care to be anything else but your lover.”

  “Darling, darling.”

  “But,” he said after the kiss.

  “Go on,” she said, lips barely away from his. “Don’t be afraid of hurting me. You can’t.”

  He sighed. “I sure can, and you can hurt me. May neither of us ever mean to. It’s bound to happen, though.”

  She nodded. “Because we’re human.” Steadfastly: “Nevertheless, because of you, that’s what I hope to stay.”

  “I don’t see how we can. Which is what my ‘but’ was about.” He was quiet for another short span. “After we’ve remerged, after we’re back in our onenesses, no doubt we’ll feel differently.”

  “I wonder if I ever will, quite.”

  He did not remind her that this “I” of her would no longer exist save as a minor memory and a faint overtone. Instead, trying to console, however awkwardly, he said, “I think I want it for you, in spite of everything. Immortality. Never to grow old and die. The power, the awareness.”

  “Yes, I know. In these lives we’re blind and deaf and stupefied.” Her laugh was a sad little murmur. “I like it.”

  “Me too. We being what we are.” Roughly: “Well, we have a while left to us.”

  “But we must get on with our task.”

  “Thank you for saying it for me.”

  “I think you realize it more clearly than I do. That makes it harder for you to speak.” She lifted her hand to cradle his cheek. “We can wait till tomorrow, can’t we?” she pleaded. “Only for a good night’s sleep.”

  He made a smile. “Hm. Sleep isn’t all I have in mind.”

  “We’ll have other chances … along the way. Won’t we?”

  Early morning in the garden, flashes of dew on leaves and petals, a hawk aloft on a breeze that caused Laurinda to pull her shawl about her. She sat by the basin and looked up at him where he strode back and forth before her, hands clenched at his sides or clutched together at his back. Gravel grated beneath his feet.

  “But where should we go?” she wondered. “Aimlessly drifting from one half-world to another till—they—finish their business and recall us. It seems futile.” She attempted lightness. “I confess to thinking we may as well ask to visit the enjoyable ones.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking differently.” Even during the times that were theirs alone.

  She braced herself.

  “You know how it goes,” he said. “Wrestling with ideas, and they have no shapes, then suddenly you wake and they’re halfway clear. I did today. Tell me how it strikes you. After all, you represent Gaia.”

  He saw her wince. When he stopped and bent down to make a gesture of contrition, she told him quickly, “No, it’s all right, dearest. Do go on.”

  He must force himself, but his voice gathered momentum as he paced and talked. “What have we seen to date? This eighteenth-century world, where Newton’s not long dead, Lagrange and Franklin are active, Lavoisier’s a boy, and the Industrial Revolution is getting under way. Why did Gaia give it to us for our home base? Just because here’s a charming house and countryside? Or because this was the best choice for her out of all she has emulated?”

  Laurinda had won back to calm. She nodded. “Mm, yes, she wouldn’t create one simply for us, especially when she is occupied with Wayfarer.”

  “Then we visited a world that went through a similar stage back in its Hellenistic era,” Christian continued. Laurinda shivered. “Yes, it failed, but the point is, we discovered it’s the only Graeco-Roman history Gaia found worth continuing for centuries. Then the, uh, conciliar Europe of 1900. That was scientific-industrial too, maybe more successfully—or less unsuccessfully—on account of having kept a strong, unified Church, though it was coming apart at last. Then the Chinese-American—not scientific, very religious, but destined to produce considerable technology in its own time of troubles.” He was silent a minute or two, except for his footfalls. “Four out of many, three almost randomly picked. Doesn’t that suggest that all which interest her have something in common?”

  “Why, yes,” she said. “We’ve talked about it, you remember. It seems as if Gaia has been trying to bring her people to a civilization that is rich, culturally and spiritually as well as materially, and is kindly and will endure.”

  “Why,” he demanded, “when the human species is extinct?”

  She straightened where she sat. “It isn’t! It lives again here, in her.”

  He bit his lip. “Is that the Gaia in you speaking, or the you in Gaia?”

  “What do you mean?” she exclaimed.

  He halted to stroke her head. “Nothing against you. Never. You are honest and gentle and everything else that is good.” Starkly: “I’m not so sure about her.”

  “Oh, no.” He heard the pain. “Christian, no.”

  “Well, never mind that for now,” he said fast, and resumed his gait to and fro. “My point is this. Is it merely an accident that all four live worlds we’ve been in were oriented toward machine technology, and three of them toward science? Does Gaia want to find out what drives the evolution of societies like that?”

  Laurinda seized the opening. “Why not? Science opens the mind, technology frees the body from all sorts of horrors. Here, today, Jenner and his smallpox vaccine aren’t far in the future—”

  “I wonder how much more there is to her intention. But anyway, my proposal is that we touch on the highest-tech civilization she has.”

  A kind of gladness kindled in her. “Yes, yes! It must be strange and wonderful.”

  He frowned. “For some countries, long ago in real history, it got pretty dreadful.”

  “Gaia wouldn’t let that happen.”

  He abstained from reminding her of what Gaia did let happen, before changing or terminating it.

  She sprang to her feet. “Come!” Seizing his hand, mischievously: “If we stay any l
ength of time, let’s arrange for private quarters.”

  In a room closed off, curtains drawn, Christian held an amulet in his palm and stared down at it as if it bore a face. Laurinda stood aside, listening, while her own countenance tightened with distress.

  “It is inadvisable,” declared the soundless voice.

  “Why?” snapped Christian.

  “You would find the environment unpleasant and the people incomprehensible.”

  “Why should a scientific culture be that alien to us?” asked Laurinda.

  “And regardless,” said Christian, “I want to see for myself. Now.”

  “Reconsider,” urged the voice. “First hear an account of the milieu.”

  “No, now. To a safe locale, yes, but one where we can get a fair impression, as we did before. Afterward you can explain as much as you like.”

  “Why shouldn’t we first hear?” Laurinda suggested.

  “Because I doubt Gaia wants us to see,” Christian answered bluntly. He might as well. Whenever Gaia chose, she could scan his thoughts. To the amulet, as if it were a person: “Take us there immediately, or Wayfarer will hear from me.”

  His suspicions, vague but growing, warned against giving the thing time to inform Gaia and giving her time to work up a Potemkin village or some other diversion. At the moment she must be unaware of this scene, her mind preoccupied with Wayfarer’s, but she had probably made provision for being informed in a low-level—subconscious?—fashion at intervals, and anything alarming would catch her attention. It was also likely that she had given the amulets certain orders beforehand, and now it appeared that among them was to avoid letting him know what went on in that particular emulation.

  Why, he could not guess.

  “You are being willful,” said the voice.

  Christian grinned. “And stubborn, and whatever else you care to call it. Take us!”

  Pretty clearly, he thought, the program was not capable of falsehoods. Gaia had not foreseen a need for that; Christian was no creation of hers, totally known to her, he was Wayfarer’s. Besides, if Wayfarer noticed that his avatar’s guide could be a liar, that would have been grounds for suspicion.