Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future

by Gardner Dozois

  Questions, like virtual particles, appeared out of nothing.

  And vanished again.

  "I've known Alice for almost my entire life." Perfect paused, waiting for his brother's eyes. "I don't need much prompting from her. For a lot of reasons, I behave."

  "If you were at the Core," Ord remarked, "you could have been helping."

  "Help build that universe? Hardly." A hard chuckle. "The Core is a big place, and I wasn't with her. I was living in seclusion between Alice and your front door."

  "But you knew what she was doing—?"

  "And fought with her when she came to visit." A black expression, sour and wild-eyed. "Oh, I fought. I augmented myself with every persuasive skill, and when they failed, I threatened her. As if that could do any good."

  Each step took them closer to the high glacial wall. Between them and the ice was a low moraine, moss and lichen growing wherever there was shelter. As they climbed the loose slope, their feet destroyed oases and created new ones. With a quiet voice— a hunter's voice— Perfect asked:

  "Do you wonder what they did with Alice's powers?"

  They had been stripped away. Of course.

  "But what does that mean?" Perfect posed the question, then gave an answer. "Powers have physical sources. Augmented minds need neural nets. Moving a world requires godly power. And there are the machines that crack molecules and weave dark matter and build bodies and tear them down again, in an instant." The healthy hand took Ord by the arm, then squeezed. "I'm talking about Alice's body and mind. Her bolts and microchines. And her antimatter-digesting guts, too."

  "I've wondered about them," the boy confessed.

  "A grand secret, they are. And a wrenching problem for the poor officials who need to decipher them, then destroy them."

  They reached the moraine's crest as the sun set behind them. A day done; a comforting sense of closure. Perfect dropped his knapsack and sat on it, eating his endless dried meat, gladly sharing it with the boy when he asked for another taste.

  Without daylight, the world shrank, darkness giving the tundra a close, constricting feel. But the ice seemed to grow, becoming glassy, some subtle inner light betraying networks of fine cracks and deep fissures. Tiny, tiny humans stood at its base. Each held a spear, but Ord realized that spears meant weapons of a different kind; and in a whisper, Perfect said:

  "That creature you met? Our Alice? As powerful as a sun, if the need arose. But when she arrived from the Core, at lightspeed, she had no mass. She was a set of instructions that then had to conjure up her physical self. She used raw materials kept in and around the solar system, kept for just such contingencies." A pause as he bit off another predatory hunk. "Most of Alice— the bulk of her memories, her skills— came later, and not quite at lightspeed. That's how we true giants travel. Think of it like a strange snowfall coming from the Core, snowflakes the size of houses and mountains, each one meaning some potent talent, and all of them here. Here, Ord. Collected and held. Waiting for someone to get the courage to crack them open and see what there is to see."

  Bright, hard stars appeared above them, then below, flares of soft blue plasma slipping through the glacier's deep fractures. This was Alice's dangerous meat, and it was larger than some worlds—

  "A morgue, in essence." The Chamberlain voice was close, softer than any whisper. "Keep still. Keep very still now."

  The moraine had vanished. Ord was in freefall.

  "Do you feel sleepy, maybe?"

  The boy felt extraordinarily tired.

  "Good. Try closing your eyes."

  But before he could, Ord said, "Closure," with a numbed mouth.

  "What was that?"

  "That's this," he muttered. "That's why she came home. She knew what would happen, and she deserved it."

  Perfect touched him with a thousand hands, and laughed. "Do you know what I like best about humans? How we take whatever happens and dress it up in any suit of clothes we want, for any occasion." The hands were hotter than suns, soothing to the touch. And intensely busy. "Maybe you're right. Maybe closure explains this whole fucking mess."

  A distant black laugh, then:

  "A poetic denouement, and she couldn't help herself."

  Then:

  "A moth, and with the Core she conjured up the perfect flame."

  7

  The boy's disappearance went unnoticed for several critical hours. Had Alice escaped, and was it Alice inside her prison cell? Those seemed to be the major questions of the moment. Sensors were placed in a diagnostic mode, perhaps explaining why no new anomalous event was observed. Then the Chamberlains learned that the boy was gone, his subterfuge too advanced to be his own work. A general alarm was sounded. Gravimetric evidence pointed to a new mass orbiting Pluto. Warnings were sent to the appropriate Nuyens, and nothing was found. But afterward, several Families reported thefts from their Neptune reserves.…

  Despite prompt action, the Oort cloud facility was infiltrated… properties were stolen.…

  Analysis proceeding with all available tools.…

  The boy is being sought.…

  —Nuyen memo, confidential

  It was like waking from death again.

  A voice. Chamberlain, and male. From the living world, he said, "The Brongg homeworld. Picture it. Walk it with me. A long, gentle beach of water-ice sands, a sea of liquid methane on our left, and on our right—"

  "The Iron Spine." Ord knew the beach. A thousand eyes seemed to open for him, only two of them mired in his own face. It was another illusion, but of superior quality. He was upright, wearing a new body. Slowly, very slowly, he turned his head until the Iron Spine filled his gaze. Before the first vertebrate evolved on earth, the Brongg had lowered a nickel-iron asteroid onto their world, setting it on a bed of vacuum bubbles. Half a billion years of mining had left it partially hollow, but the remnants were spectacular, floating on the water-ice crust, their flanks covered with blue-black vegetation that was adapted to the bitter taste of heavy metals.

  The weak Brongg sun was rising above the highest peak. A Brongg day lasted for a full Terran month, Ord recalled, and with that fact came a multitude of ancillary facts and details, making him the helpless expert. "Today," Perfect announced, "we will walk a beach."

  The beach was gray with black organic streaks, and it was as smooth as pavement, curving out toward a rocky point where a polished black cylinder stood on end, casting a long shadow across the calm and colorless sea. The distances looked trivial, yet with his first painful step, he realized this would be difficult at best. The Brongg nervous systems were built from superconducting materials, thoughts flowing without resistance, without turbulence; but their physical metabolisms were sluggish, each physical act considered and reconsidered thousands of times before it was attempted, or not.

  "Perhaps," said Perfect, "that's why they've lasted so long. Unlike people, they have to think before they step.…"

  Turning his head was a struggle— a sobering investment— and it took most of a stride. Perfect was a Brongg in body, like Ord. A nude, fishy exterior wore thick legs and broad, round feet, and his webbed hands held a delicate ice lance. But the face was comically Chamberlain, blue eyes winking, the human mouth grinning at the world.

  "In all," asked Perfect, "how many genuine living intelligences have I found first? Count them for me, please."

  The voice was a radio pulse born from the swift nervous system. In an instant, Ord saw each of his brother's discoveries, oldest to newest. One hundred and three species on almost as many worlds. No human could claim half as many finds. True, most were technology-incompetent. But almost two dozen, the Brongg included, had been deemed worthy of diplomats and trade, cultural exchanges, and scientific ones, too.

  "Now," said Perfect, "count the failed worlds."

  Again, Ord knew the exact number. Memories encoded in a tireless net flowed into him. He saw Perfect tracking whispers through a wilderness of stars. Some whispers vanished, some grew stronger, but all en
ded at some technological world or worlds, all freshly killed. Wars had done it, mostly. Sometimes plagues. Experiments and machines had gone amuck, or a battered ecosystem had collapsed back to the microbes. Nothing with which to speak, save the occasional computer or some automated station that still watched the sky and shouted, begging the stars for help, for alliances, for second chances, for God.

  Counting was easy; remembering took an age.

  Images like fists struck Ord, leaving him spent and sore, and sorry.

  And Perfect had suffered even more. Hopes ruined each time; nothing but wreckage left. Armed with a Chamberlain's skills, he would sift through the gruesome traces— bones and burnt cities and records— then he would build phantoms of the dead, complete with voices and desires, and the telling flaws. These examples gave insights. Perfect could ask the phantoms why and how they had so willingly pushed their homes and selves into oblivion. Forty-eight worlds, Ord counted, plus hundreds more where life began, evolved to some sophisticated, promising level, only to be shattered by a comet's splash or the detonation of a nearby sun. And as he stared at that carnage, Ord asked the obvious:

  "How does any intelligence survive?"

  "Exactly. Exactly!" A familiar laugh, if somewhat bleak, then Perfect took another agonizing step, ice-sands dimpling beneath the bare right foot. "The Brongg are the elders, but they had it easy. Their solar system has few fissionable materials, and they're pathologically introspective. Even when they could have augmented themselves, boosting their physical selves, they didn't. Wouldn't. Out of fear more than wisdom, I think. Too many uncertainties regardless of how long they rolled the Sisyphean problem back and forth in their heads."

  The Brongg were cold, slow, and scarce. The truth told, Ord had never admired them, and he wasn't about to start now.

  "And at the other end of the spectrum, or near it, are humans. Churning, hot whirlwinds, passionate to a fault, aggressive to no good ends, and alive now only because we scared ourselves into wisdom. Terrible wars led to the Families and the Great Peace, and our little truce has lasted quite a while, I think. As long as everyone was happy, who cared who rowed the damned boat?"

  A great long laugh. Electric, chilling.

  "Millions of years," said Perfect, "and I've studied the dead and the living. Now doesn't it make sense that I'd find patterns? Relationships? Little tendencies, and the big fat ones?"

  Ord had to agree.

  "Tendencies," Perfect repeated. "And out of them, conclusions. How I would invent life from nothingness, given my chance? The best of the Brongg, the bedrock of ourselves. All put into a stew with every other successful species, in some realm pure and innocent—"

  "And perfect," Ord said, anticipating the words.

  "And now, brother, you know why Alice renamed me. I have the wicked flaw of needing to chase perfection."

  Trying to guess the next stage, Ord mentioned the odd, illegal worlds that Alice had built. Not terraformed, but alien. Novel proteins and toxic solvents, all had built to mimic natural worlds.

  "Ordinary, ordinary worlds," was Perfect's assessment.

  "How can you say it? She broke every law to make them, and she hid them away in dust clouds and globular clusters—"

  "And I am telling you that these worlds are fundamentally traditional. I agree, yes, Alice went into the kitchen and made strange muffins, but the muffins have the ingredients you'd expect in a kitchen. Which made me ask: 'Where is your genius, Alice? Why that silly pride?' "

  "You said that to Alice?"

  "For the last few thousand centuries, yes. And she would say that if I was so clever, I should do better. 'With your help,' I would promise. Not being a superior terraformer, I needed hands trained for the big dull ugly labor of it. And eventually she agreed to help, just this once, surprising both of us, I believe."

  Ord felt a sudden chill, a premonition.

  "Where are we going?" he asked. "Tell me, please."

  Perfect showed him an enormous smile, then gestured with vegetable slowness, his ice lance held in his left hand, two of the Brongg's minor fingers missing. "Down the beach," he replied, not quite laughing. "We're walking beside the sea, and it looks as if we're halfway there… can't you see…?"

  *

  Halfway, and the weak little sun was directly overhead, black-red clouds of hydrocarbons forming in the upper atmosphere, a chill shadow falling over them and the flat, rather greasy sea. Two weeks of walking, yet it seemed longer. A few words spoken, but Ord had absorbed volumes of information, the pace relentless, its quality and the demands beyond his experience, his expectations. And it never stopped, Perfect's memories pouring into him even as his brother remarked, "I wish there was more time, Ord. I do."

  Why wasn't there?

  "Because we're being pursued. Hounds on our heels, if you will."

  Ord looked over a shoulder, the alien neck as pliable as an owl's. The beach was empty save for a willowy creature walking in the shallow methane, jabbing with claws, in slow motion, and managing to impale an eel-like creature even more sluggish than itself.

  "How fast are we moving?"

  "In space," Perfect replied, "just a whisper under lightspeed."

  "Why not lightspeed?"

  "Because. This is fast enough. Our destination isn't equipped to receive us as a rain of massless particles. And since you deserve to know, it's because we have some possessions that need to be carried as they are, and I'm not allowed to say more, and I wish it were otherwise, Brother. I genuinely do."

  A powerful dread was working on Ord. He gasped with his mouth and unseen gills, then forced himself to ask the next question. "How many pursuers?"

  "Two. But presumably others are in their wake."

  "How close are they?"

  "On this scale, on our little beach… if I showed them to you, they would be wearing our skins…!"

  Ord turned, looking forward again. Concentrating on the slick black cylinder, he said, "You're doing this for Alice. Is that correct?"

  "Some of it is her idea, yes."

  "Why is Alice so important to you?"

  Perfect asked, "Is she?"

  What other ancient brother would conspire with her, without apparent hesitation? "You've got thousands of sisters. Why do you take such huge risks for Alice?"

  "Don't you know?" A soft, unreadable laugh. "Haven't you guessed?"

  Ord grappled with the possibilities. Besides their common age, no answer seemed reasonable. They were Chamberlains, but with different interests and philosophies. And even age couldn't be the whole answer, since there were dozens of siblings with their enormous rank.

  "Try something unreasonable," was Perfect's advice.

  Ord imagined several improbabilities, none adequate.

  "So try the unthinkable. Alice and I are close, yes. Yes. But what answer is the last one you would hope to find?"

  In a whisper, Ord said, "No."

  "Yet you're right, Ord. Congratulations."

  Suddenly the boy saw the Chamberlain mansion— the smaller, original incarnation— and the original penthouse on its topmost floor. It was autumn, again. Alice stood at the penthouse window, again. But the mountains were younger, the leaves more subdued, and the penthouse was intact and rather primitive, in furnishings and its luxuries.

  This Alice didn't wear a little girl's body. The brilliant sun pierced her dress, betraying a body fully matured, relentlessly feminine… the scene having some quality that caused Ord to squirm and look away for a few uneasy moments.

  He was standing in the penthouse, unnoticed.

  Alice was on her toes, her feet bare, breasts pressed against glass, the bright eyes staring down at the world while someone emerged from the door at the room's center. A tall male Chamberlain of no particular age, he wore a stiff uniform that had once meant rank in the postwar government— a creature of status and some influence, yet not much older than Ord— and dangling from his dress shirt was a length of optical cable, its buried end linked with his nervous s
ystem, these technologies only slightly above fire and Folsom points.

  Here was Thomas as a young man, Ord knew.

  Ten million years in the past, and the Peace was newborn, and the Families had just begun their long ascent.

  His brother wore no boots or socks, perhaps for the sake of stealth. Walking on long, bare feet that were the same pink as Alice's feet, he stalked their sister, without sound or hesitations. But she knew he was there. Probably with his first steps, she knew. Through her body she conveyed a sense of controlled eagerness, calves flexed and fingers spread and the tilt of her head flirtatious, sunlight making her neck and nearer ear glow with an inner light.

  Yet Alice couldn't remain passive to the last moment. It was against her nature. This was the end of a long and relentless seduction. Thomas found the courage or lust to lift his hands— five fingers on each— and his sister decided to take full charge, stealing his momentum, flipping back her autumn hair while a calculated voice told him:

  "See? You're not perfect after all."

  Thomas hesitated, just for an instant, then seemingly willed his hands to close on her shoulders; and she said:

  "Don't."

  Then:

  "I will tell on you."

  Then, with emphasis:

  "Ian. I'll tell him everything."

  In those days, Families looked elsewhere when siblings played these games. It was assumed they would outgrow incest in the same way they were outgrowing selfishness and cruelty. But Chamberlains were even better than the others. Ian, their ultimate parent, had said so. He would take his male clones aside, telling them, "Your sisters are taboo! Untouchable! I'd rather see you screwing the livestock than them!" And with those hard words, he planted some compelling images in each youngster— a miscalculation that the patriarch would make for dozens of generations, without fail.

  But Thomas— the eventual Brother Perfect— seemed to believe his sister's words, pulling back his hands as if burned, a careless and quick little voice saying, "Don't tell… anyone… no…!"