Orphans of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Jesus,” gasped Alander. “Look at the size of it!”

  Hatzis couldn’t read the Yuhl figures, and was about to ask exactly just how big the thing was, when she saw an image that caused the breath to catch in her throat.

  “That can’t possibly be...” she started, staring in awe at the swarm of Starfish cutters arcing toward them from the belly of the strange, new craft, dwarfed by its size. She felt an overwhelming sense of dread and nauseous helplessness quickly take her over. “It’s not possible.” Her words were barely a whisper.

  If the cutters themselves were kilometers across, then that made this new craft thousands of kilometers long. Maybe tens of thousands—as long as a planet was wide!

  The swarm of cutters loomed large in the screen, splitting up or jumping through unspace to deal with the remnants of the Mantissa. Single hole ships and tetrads flew in all directions under the advancing enemy. She couldn’t understand the words the Yuhl pilots were shouting, but she caught the gist of it.

  “Get the hell out of here!” she yelled as the Starfish fleet—sufficient to destroy a thousand Vinculas—bore down on them. The glare of red and yellow energy weapons exploded from the screen.

  Then the view from Beid disappeared, and they were relocating.

  Hatzis felt herself physically sag. The battle had been exhausting enough, but this...

  “Are you all right?” Alander asked, stepping between her and the screen, which she continued to stare at, despite there being nothing there to see.

  “I’m...” She stopped, leaning back tiredly against the wall. “How the hell are we going to fight this, Peter?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, shrugging. “But if we can destroy one—”

  “One?” she spat. “That one took out almost everything we threw at it! How the fuck are we supposed to take on hundreds of the damn things? How, Peter?” Even as she said this, part of her was crying out, But we have to!

  “So you’re saying we should just give up?” he said incredulously. “After everything we’ve been through?”

  “It has to be better than dying, surely?”

  They’d fought, and they’d lost. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake that simple fact. They’d tried and failed. Everything the Yuhl had said about the Starfish was true: they were unstoppable. The human race would have to flee, in much the same way the Yuhl had done, or it would be destroyed.

  She felt tears of frustration well up inside her, but she refused to cry. She wouldn’t give in to the emotions. Not here, not now. Instead, the emotions remained unexpressed. For a long moment she felt as though her entire in- sides were screaming.

  When Alander put his arms around her and pulled her in close, she couldn’t help but laugh. They were the last two humans left—the closest things left to human, anyway. They were alone against the stars. It seemed almost ridiculous that of all people, they should be here now, comforting each other.

  But she didn’t pull away, either, because regardless of how ludicrous it seemed, it was comforting, nonetheless. As their tetrad traversed the smooth safety of unspace, she realized just how foolish it would be to turn away what reassurance she could find. With so little of it remaining in the universe, God only knew when she’d be offered any again.

  3.0.1

  Rob Singh

  EXCERPTS FROM THE PID (PERSONAL INFORMATION DIRECTORY) OF ROB SINGH, UNESSPRO MISSION 639, TESS NELSON (PSI CAPRICORNUS).

  2160.9.18-19 Standard Mission Time

  Two more holes, both cross-referencing errors between the Gallery, the Map Room, and the Library: the same as the first, in other words. They are otherwise dissimilar, however, and don’t seem to be connected. I was hoping a pattern would have emerged by now. I can’t decide if the absence of a pattern means there isn’t one, or if I just don’t have enough data.

  The errors I’ve found appear in the other colonies’ data, though. That was easy enough to check across the board, if a little time consuming. I’m the only one pursuing this topic at the moment. Everyone else is looking for weapons or defenses with which to fight the Yuhl. It strikes me as futile fighting another victim of the Starfish, no matter what they’ve done to us. Is this what we are to be reduced to?

  The question of whether the gifts contain deliberately hidden clues has haunted me since I found the first one. The alternative is frightening. We have to believe that the Spinners are doing the right thing by us; otherwise the whole exercise becomes futile. If the gifts comprise one enormous pack of lies designed to throw us off the track of self-improvement, then it might even be worse than futile. Are these errors, then, this evidence of the Spinners’ infallibility, chinks in their armor or continuity errors arising out of fabricated data?

  There is a middle ground, and it is here I prefer to balance my opinion at the moment. The Gifts are notorious for their avoidance of anything to do with their makers. Maybe this has something to do with them. They could be fudging the data to cover their origins. But I don’t know. And that’s the problem. No one really knows anything. We’re like birds picking at stray seeds around a grain silo. And if some of those seeds are bad...

  Only time will tell, I guess.

  * * *

  I don’t know why, but the existence of the Tedesco bursts is bothering me again. Part of me believes that there’s a way to fit everything together in a neat, sensible order. I hope that part of me proves to be right.

  Today’s theory is that the Spinners haven’t been traveling in a straight line at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. If they’re wandering drunkenly across the galaxy, or spiraling outward from the core, they could have passed near here once before. Assuming the transmissions came from iota Sculptor, say, it’s quite conceivable that the Starfish destroyed the civilization that made them in its wake, provoking a short-lived scream for help we picked up 310 years later. Later still, the Spinners completed a circuit of the galaxy and came through our part of the universe again, very nearly returning to the scene of the crime. The close coincidence of our receiving the Tedesco bursts and the arrival of the Spinners was simply just that—a coincidence.

  But that doesn’t explain why the data is so vague in this area of the Map Room. If they’ve passed this way before, the data should be more complete. Or so I would’ve expected. And why travel in such a wandering manner, anyway? Once again, I am at a loss to explain the behavior of a species so mysterious and secretive that we don’t even know what they look like.

  If I’m getting somewhere with this investigation, it’s impossible for me to tell. Maybe I’m just wasting my time. I keep thinking, One day. If I knew how many days were left, maybe I would let myself believe that this one would come. Far more likely, I think, that I will die with the questions entirely unanswered.

  * * *

  Today is a bad day. I miss my home. I miss Earth. I can’t believe (another thing I can’t believe) that it’s really gone. Why don’t we evacuate to Sol and live among the ruins? That’s what I’d like to do. At least I’d gain a sense of completion, of coming home. It might not be much, but at least it would be something.

  Sol is still gone. There’s talk of a summit with the Yuhl, but I don’t know who or what to believe anymore. Christ, I still can’t believe that Frank the Ax is alive! He’s the prick who cut the budget for the third-generation Euroshuttle by half in the midtwenties, effectively killing the project. Of the billions of people that once populated the Earth, what sort of perverse twist of fate was it that allowed a son of a bitch like him to be one of the handful to carry on humanity’s legacy? If there is a God, then clearly he or she has a warped sense of humor.

  * * *

  A little more has been released about the Yuhl. In particular, I know now that they don’t actually worship the Starfish. That hasn’t stopped me being intrigued by the notion of the Spinners and Starfish as diametrically opposed aspects of the same thing, though: the giver and the taker on a truly cosmic scale. It put me to thinking about double-headed gods
from our own culture, the most obvious being Janus, Roman god of gateways, entrances, and exits. As the god who stood for the beginning of the new year and the end of the old—hence January—he would make a good analogy for this Ambivalence I keep hearing about. Ringing in new times, then smashing all the bells.

  But Janus is not the most apt I can think of. There’s Harihara, a Kampuchean representation of Vishnu and Shiva as a two-headed divinity: Vishnu the god of earth, atmosphere, and heaven, and Shiva the embodiment of cosmic power in all its aspects. We know Shiva best as the Destroyer, thanks to Oppenheimer’s famous speech about the atomic bomb, two centuries ago. Even after all this time, those words still chill me to the bone.

  Morbid thoughts, but not entirely fruitless. I wonder now if the Yuhl aren’t in the Library because the Gifts are a standard care package put together millennia ago, well before the Starfish encountered them. We already assume that the Spinners are so advanced that they can easily afford to throw around dozens of Gift drops without even noticing; is it that much harder to believe that they are so far above us they don’t care what’s in them?

  This might also explain the vagueness of the Map Room, as well as the presence of the communicators in the package. The ftl communicators have the capacity to summon all and sundry to our calls when we use them, but that means nothing to the Spinners. And why should it? After all, would we bother to stop to ensure that the crumbs we drop are used appropriately by the ants that found them? Of course not. It’s not the Spinners’ fault they’re too advanced to care about us. In fact, it’s no one’s fault that we’re too coarse to see the subtleties underlying the grand design of these advanced beings.

  That damned subtlety. I remember thinking that knowing it existed put me halfway to understanding it. Now I realize how naïve that was. There’s nothing more I can really do now except curse it. Even if it kills us, that’s just too bad. It will just have to serve as a harsh lesson, I guess.

  * * *

  Ali’s just left. We were together when word came over the communicator that Sol is going to use the empty colonies as decoys.

  “She’s what?” I was shocked.

  Ali shushed me in order to hear the rest of the message. This was coming out raw, right from the horse’s mouth. Sol’s squaring up to fight the Starfish in Beid, which was where she went to negotiate with the Yuhl. I don’t understand how it has come to this. I’m all for raging against the dying light and all, but Christ, you don’t invite it in.

  Ali went pale as the words echoed through my virtual space. There was no point arguing; we were committed. And besides, in a way, I could see the sense of it. Spreading the Starfish thin is the only tactic left open to us. But why Sothis, too? Why did they have to put us at risk? Haven’t we lost enough already?

  Gou Mang signed McKenzie Base’s death the moment she responded to Sol’s call for help. If she takes even one of us down with it, I’m going to hold her personally responsible.

  “I’m sorry, Rob,” Ali said, cupping my cheek in one hand. “But I have to go.”

  “I understand. Is there anything I can—?”

  She shook her head quickly. “I don’t know just yet. I’ll call you, though, if I need you. I know I can rely on you.”

  She left, blinking back tears. I was struck then by the thought that we might never see each other again. I still am, to be honest. The possibility of my own death I can face squarely; it’ll just be an end after all, a ceasing. But the death of a loved one cuts deep. Even the thought that if we go down at all we go down together is no comfort, since we’re running on the same cannibalized processors. No comfort at all, in fact. Given the choice, I would deny her nothing.

  Actually, given the choice, I wouldn’t even be here. Evacuation procedures are getting into gear as I dictate this. People are panicking. The whole infrastructure is breaking down. We thought we were ready for anything. But we’re not. We all hoped it wouldn’t happen to us. People are never ready for this sort of thing.

  Even I can’t quite believe it yet. The Starfish are going to attack Sothis. Sooner or later, they’ll come. They always do when a communicator is used. We know that. It’s only a matter of when. It could be in an hour, it could be in a day. It could already be happening, and we simply haven’t noticed yet.

  Either way, it’s time I ended this. In a second, I’ll save the file and store it in the reserve SSDS banks. They’ll be backed up in triplicate and shipped out with the SSDS records of our colony. We go in the shipment after that. That makes sense, even if it is another harsh lesson. Our data are worth more than we are. But at least my investigation will be saved, even if in the end it doesn’t mean anything.

  I sit here watching my processing rate, waiting for it to drop. When it does, I’ll know the upload to the evacuee ship has begun. If I could pray, I would—to either the old gods of Earth or the subtle new gods of the stars. Shit, I’d pray to the Ambivalence if I thought it would make a difference. But I doubt they’d even bother to listen.

  But perhaps my belief in the method behind the Spinners’ madness is not so foolish. It has sustained me this long; maybe it will sustain me longer. Maybe. We’ll see. All I can do is wait, and it is the waiting that I find truly awful.

  3.0.2

  Lucia Benck

  2160.9.20 Standard Mission Time

  (21 August, 2163 UT)

  She had been dreaming. At least she thought she had. It was hard to say for sure. At the moment she didn’t know where she was or how she had even come to be there, so who was to say that this wasn’t the dream?

  She remembered trying to recall something. Something had been missing. Some data? A memory, perhaps? Whatever it was, it had been troubling her for a long time. Something to do with Peter, maybe? A picture of the two of them, which she had misplaced?

  She silently scolded herself, wanting to shake the idiotic thought from her head. But she didn’t have a head with which to do this. Nor a body, for that matter. She extended to all directions in a new and strange environment. Whatever it was that held her, it certainly wasn’t the Chung-5. It seemed to be a ship, albeit of a sort she hadn’t even imagined before. It was constructed from principles she could barely begin to grasp, and the external structure appeared to have been recently modified, complicating the picture even further. She knew that there was another mind inside with her, coiled up among the strange pathways like a hibernating snake. Presumably the ship’s mind, it ticked slowly over, maintaining esoteric processes she had no hope of understanding. The mind didn’t object to her presence; she sensed that clearly. It gave her free rein to explore and experiment. Perhaps one day, she thought, given the chance, she could learn to fly the ship herself. For now, though, she just wanted to look.

  With a simple effort of will, she utilized all of the ship’s scanning equipment to see around her. Outside was a system in ruins, littered with radioactive dust and the residue of what must have once been ships like hers. A desert world sported several new craters beneath a haze of hot dust. The system’s blinding white sun left nothing to the imagination. A war had been fought here. And someone had lost.

  As she pondered who it might have been, a white dot disturbed the battlefield. A voice reached out to her.

  “Pearl? Can you hear me?”

  The voice prompted movement within her. Startled, she turned her attention back inside and realized only then that she had missed something absolutely fundamental about the ship’s design. It had no heart, but it wrapped around itself in such a way as to leave a space. And inside that space, there was a person sitting on a narrow couch, staring at a display screen. She could see this person from various povs around the cockpit and even from the inside, and she soon realized that her first thought was wrong. This was no person, except in the broadest possible sense. With its unnaturally large build and its olive-green skin, the body was an android, not naturally born.

  “Sol?” said the android, standing. It seemed oblivious to her presence. “Is that you?”
<
br />   “Yeah, it’s me. What are you doing here? We thought we’d lost you!”

  The voice from outside spoke in reply to the android. She sensed the messages rushing along channels all around her, from the white speck to the chamber within and back again.

  “Sol, I’m sorry. I was trying to...” The android stopped and shook its head. Its cheeks were wet. “I—I thought you were dead.”

  “Not quite. I wasn’t here when the Starfish came. Gou Mang managed to get about half of the people away in time before they wiped her out with the base. We lost Rama, Hammon, Inari, and Hera as well, and we’re pulling out of everywhere else just in case. I only came back to see if anyone else had turned up; otherwise, you would’ve missed us completely.”

  The names were unfamiliar to her, but the voice from outside rang a faint bell. Something about the android looked familiar, too, in a blunt sort of way—although therein lay a paradox: both reminded her of the same person.

  “But how did it happen? I thought we were safe here.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’ve been in transit. It was a long trip.”

  “Shit, Thor. So much has changed! We’re based in iota Boötis now, an empty, binary system where no one will think of looking for us. It’s a good place to retool and rethink, for us as well as the Yuhl. The Fit think we’re lunatics, but the Praxis is on our side. It’s listening to reason, and that’s the main thing.”