The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  “You’ll bring the Shiva statue back to New Bombay,” I said softly, “and your answers, too.”

  In his hands, with the bright lighting, the bronze statue cast a dancing shadow on his naked body.

  I found Kane at his terminal, so deep in thought that he didn’t know I was there until I squeezed his shoulder. Then he jumped, cursed, and dragged his eyes from his displays.

  “How does it progress, Kane?”

  “It doesn’t. How could it? I need more data!”

  “It will come. Be patient,” I said.

  He rubbed his left ear, a constant habit when he’s irritated, which is much of the time. When he’s happily excited, Kane runs his left hand through his coarse red hair until it stands up like flames. Now he smiled ruefully. “I’m not much known for patience.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “But you’re right, Tirzah. The data will come. It’s just hard waiting for the first minicap. I wish to hell we could have more than three. Goddamn cheap bureaucrats! At an acceleration of—”

  “Don’t give me the figures again,” I said. I wound my fingers in his hair and pulled playfully. “Kane, I came to ask you a favor.”

  “All right,” he said instantly. Kane never counts costs ahead of time. Ajit would have turned gently cautious. “What is it?”

  “I want you to learn to play go with Ajit.”

  He scowled. “Why?”

  With Kane, you must have your logic ready. He would do any favor I asked, but unless he can see why, compliance would be grudging at best. “First, because go will help you pass the time until the first minicap arrives, in doing something other than chewing the same data over and over again until you’ve masticated it into tastlessness. Second, because the game is complex enough that I think you’ll enjoy it. Third, because I’m not too bad at it myself but Ajit is better, and I think you will be, too, so I can learn from both of you.”

  And fourth, I didn’t say aloud, because Ajit is a master, he will beat you most of the time, and he needs the boost in confidence.

  Ajit is not the scientist that Kane is. Practically no one in the settled worlds is the scientist that Kane is. All three of us know this, but none of us have ever mentioned it, not even once. There are geniuses who are easy for the inferior to work with, who are generous enough to slow down their mental strides to the smaller steps of the merely gifted. Kane is not one of them.

  “Go,” Kane says thoughtfully. “I have friends who play that.”

  This was a misstatement. Kane does not have friends, in the usual sense. He has colleagues, he has science, and he has me.

  He smiled at me, a rare touch of sweet gratitude on his handsome face. “Thanks, Tirzah. I’ll play with Ajit. You’re right, it will pass the time until the probe sends back the prelim data. And if I’m occupied, maybe I’ll be less of a monster to you.”

  “You’re fine to me,” I say, giving his hair another tug, grinning with the casual flippancy he prefers. “Or if you’re not, I don’t care.”

  Kane laughs. In moments like this, I am especially careful that my own feelings don’t show. To either of them.

  2. PROBE

  We automatically woke after the hyperjump. For reasons I don’t understand, a hyperjump isn’t instantaneous, perhaps because it’s not really a “jump” but a Calabi-Yau dimension tunnel. Several days’ ship-time had passed, and the probe now drifted less than five light-years from the galactic core. The probe, power off, checked out perfectly; the shielding had held even better than expected. And so had we. My eyes widened as I studied the wardroom displays.

  On the Kepler, dust clouds had softened and obscured the view. Here, nothing did. We drifted just outside a star that had begun its deadly spiral inward toward Sag A*. Visuals showed the full deadly glory around the hole: the hot blue cluster of IRS16. The giant red star IRS7 with its long tail distended by stellar winds. The stars already past the point of no return, pulled by the gravity of Sag A* inexorably toward its event horizon. The radio, gamma-ray, and infrared displays revealed even more, brilliant with the radiation pouring from every single gorgeous, lethal object in the bright sky.

  And there, too, shone one of the mysteries Kane and Ajit had come to study: the massive young stars that were not being yanked toward Sag A*, and which in this place should have been neither massive nor relatively stable. Such stars should not exist this close to the hole. One star, Kane had told me, was as close to the hole as twice Pluto’s orbit from Sol. How had it gotten there?

  “It’s beautiful, in a hellish way,” I said to Ajit and Kane. “I want to go up to the observatory and see it direct.”

  “The observatory!” Kane said scornfully. “I need to get to work!” He sat down at his terminal.

  None of this is true, of course. There is no observatory on the probe, and I can’t climb the ladder “up” to it. Nor is there a wardroom with terminals, chairs, table, displays, a computer. We are the computer, or rather we are inside it. But the programs running along with us make it all seem as real as the fleshy versions of ourselves on the Kepler. This, it was determined by previous disastrous experience in space exploration, is necessary to keep us sane and stable. Human uploads need this illusion, this shadow reality, and we accept it easily. Why not? It’s the default setting for our minds.

  So Kane “sat” “at” his “terminal” to look at the preliminary data from the sensors. So did Ajit, and I “went” “upstairs” to the observatory, where I gazed outward for a long time.

  I—the other “I,” the one on the Kepler—grew up on a station in the Oort Cloud, Sol System. Space is my natural home. I don’t really understand how mud-dwellers live on planets, or why they would want to, at the bottom of a murky and dirty shroud of uncontrollable air. I have learned to simulate understanding planetary love, because it is my job. Both Kane and Ajit come from rocks, Ajit from New Bombay, and Kane from Terra herself. They are space scientists, but not real spacers.

  No mud-dweller ever really sees the stars. And no human being had ever seen what I saw now, the frantic heart of the human universe.

  Eventually I went back downstairs, rechecked ship’s data, and then sat at the wardroom table and took up my embroidery. The ancient, irrelevant cloth-ornamenting is very soothing, almost as much so as gardening, although of course that’s not why I do it. All first-class Nurturers practice some humble handicraft. It allows you to closely observe people while appearing absorbed and harmless.

  Kane, of course, was oblivious to me. I could have glared at him through a magnifying glass and he wouldn’t have noticed, not if he was working. Back on the Kepler, he had explained in simple terms—or at least as simple as Kane’s explanations ever get—why there should not be any young stars this close to the core, as well as three possible explanations for why there are. He told me all this, in typical Kane fashion, in bed. Postcoital intimacy.

  “The stars’ spectra show they’re young, Tirzah. And close—SO-2 comes to within eighty AU’s of Sag A*! It’s wrong—the core is incredibly inhospitable to star formation! Also, these close-in stars have very peculiar orbits.”

  “You’re taking it personally,” I observed, smiling.

  “Of course I am!” This was said totally without irony. “Those young stars have no business there. The tidal forces of the hole should rip any hot dust clouds to shreds long before any stars could form. And if they formed farther out, say one hundred light-years out, they should have died before they got this close in. These supermassive stars only last a few million years.”

  “But there they are.”

  “Yes. Why do you still have this lacy thing on? It’s irritating.”

  “Because you were so eager that I didn’t have time to get it off.”

  “Well, take it off now.”

  I did, and he wrapped my body close to his, and went on fretting over star formation in the core.

  “There are three theories. One is that a dust cloud ringing the core, about six light-years out, keep
s forming stars, which are then blown outwards again by galactic winds, and then drawn in, and repeat. Another theory is that there’s a second, intermediate medium-sized black hole orbiting Sag A* and exerting a counterpull on the stars. But if so, why aren’t we detecting its radio waves? Another idea is that the stars aren’t really young at all, they’re composites of remnants of elderly stars that merged to form a body that only looks bright and young.”

  I said, “Which theory do you like?”

  “None of them.” And then, in one of those lightning changes he was capable of, he focused all his attention on me. “Are you all right, Tirzah? I know this has got to be a boring voyage for you. Running ship can’t take much of your time, and neither can baby-sitting me.”

  I laughed aloud and Kane, having no idea why, frowned slightly. It was such a typically Kane speech. A sudden burst of intense concern, which would prove equally transitory. No mention of Ajit at all, as if only Kane existed for me. And his total ignorance of how often I interceded between him and Ajit, smoothed over tensions between them, spent time calming and centering separately each of these men who were more like the stars outside the ship than either of them were capable of recognizing. Brilliant, heated, intense, inherently unstable.

  “I’m fine, Kane. I’m enjoying myself.”

  “Well, good,” he said, and I saw that he then forgot me, back to brooding about his theories.

  Neither Kane nor Ajit knows that I love Kane. I don’t love Ajit. Whatever calls up love in our hidden hearts, it is unfathomable. Kane arouses in me a happiness, a desire, a completeness that puts a glow on the world because he— difficult, questing, vital—is in it. Ajit, through no fault of his own, does not.

  Neither of them will ever know this. I would berate myself if they did. My personal feelings don’t matter here. I am a captain.

  “Damn and double damn!” Kane said, admiringly. “Look at that!”

  Ajit reacted as if Kane had spoken to him, but of course Kane had not. He was just thinking aloud. I put down my embroidery and went to stand behind them at their terminals.

  Ajit said, “Those readings must be wrong. The sensors were damaged after all, either in hypertransit or by radiation.”

  Kane didn’t reply; I doubt he’d heard. I said, “What is it?”

  It was Ajit who answered. “The mass readings are wrong. They’re showing high mass density for several areas of empty space.”

  I said, “Maybe that’s where the new young stars are forming?”

  Not even Ajit answered this, which told me it was a stupid statement. It doesn’t matter; I don’t pretend to be a scientist. I merely wanted to keep them talking, to gauge their states of mind.

  Ajit said, “It would be remarkable if all equipment had emerged undamaged from the jump into this radiation.”

  “Kane?” I said.

  “It’s not the equipment,” he muttered. So he had been listening, at least peripherally. “Supersymmetry.”

  Ajit immediately objected to this, in terms I didn’t understand. They were off into a discussion I had no chance of following. I let it go on for a while, then even longer, since it sounded the way scientific discussions are supposed to sound: intense but not acrimonious, not personal.

  When they wound down a bit, I said, “Did the minicapsule go off to the Kepler? They’re waiting for the prelim data, and the minicap takes days to jump. Did either of you remember to record and send?”

  They both looked at me, as if trying to remember who I was and what I was doing there. In that moment, for the first time, they looked alike.

  “I remembered,” Ajit said. “The prelim data went off to the Kepler. Kane—” They were off again.

  3. SHIP

  The go games were not a success.

  The problem, I could see, was with Ajit. He was a far better player than Kane, both intuitively and through experience. This didn’t bother Kane at all; he thrived on challenge. But his own clear superiority subtly affected Ajit.

  “Game won,” he said for the third time in the evening, and at the slight smirk in his voice I looked up from my embroidery.

  “Damn and double damn,” Kane said, without rancor. “Set them up again.”

  “No, I think I will go celebrate my victories with Tirzah.”

  This was Kane’s night, but the two of them had never insisted on precedence. This was because I had never let it come to that; it’s part of my job to give the illusion that I am always available to both, on whatever occasion they wish. Of course, I control, through a hundred subtle signals and without either realizing it, which occasions they happen to wish. Where I make love depends on whom I need to observe. This direct claim by Ajit, connecting me to his go victories, was new.

  Kane, of course, didn’t notice. “All right. God, I wish the minicap would come. I want that data!”

  Now that the game had released his attention, he was restless again. He rose and paced around the wardroom, which doesn’t admit too much pacing. “I think I’ll go up to the observatory. Anybody coming?”

  He had already forgotten that I was leaving with Ajit. I saw Ajit go still. Such a small thing—Ajit was affronted that Kane was not affected by Ajit’s game victory, or by his bearing me off like some earned prize. Another man would have felt a moment of pique and then forgotten it. Ajit was not another man. Neither was Kane. Stable men don’t volunteer for missions like this.

  It’s different for me; I was bred to space. The scientists were not.

  I put down my embroidery, took Ajit’s hand, and snuggled close to him. Kane, for the moment, was fine. His restless desire for his data wouldn’t do him any harm. It was Ajit I needed to work with.

  I was the one who had suggested the go games. Good captains are not supposed to make mistakes like that. It was up to me to set things right.

  By the time the minicap arrived, everything was worse.

  They would not, either of them, stop the go games. They played obsessively, six or seven times a day, then nine or ten, and finally every waking minute. Ajit continued to win the large majority of the games, but not all of them. Kane focused his formidable intelligence on devising strategies, and he had the advantage of caring but not too much. Yes, he was obsessed, but I could see that once he had something more significant to do, he would leave the go games without a backward glance.

  Ajit grew more focused, too. Even more intent on winning, even as he began to lose a few games. More slyly gleeful when he did win. He flicked his winning piece onto the board with a turn of the wrist in which I read both contempt and fear.

  I tried everything I could to intervene, every trick from a century of experience. Nothing worked. Sex only made it worse. Ajit regarded sex as an earned prize, Kane as a temporary refreshment so he could return to the games.

  One night Ajit brought out the statue of Shiva and put it defiantly on the wardroom table. It took up two-thirds of the space, a wide metal circle enclosing the four-armed dancer.

  “What’s that?” Kane said, looking up from the game board. “Oh, God, it’s a god.”

  I said quickly, “It’s an intellectual concept. The flow of cosmic energy in the universe.”

  Kane laughed, not maliciously, but I saw Ajit’s eyes light up. Ajit said, “I want it here.”

  Kane shrugged. “Fine by me. Your turn, Ajit.”

  Wrong, wrong. Ajit had hoped to disturb Kane, to push him into some open objection to the statue. Ajit wanted a small confrontation, some outlet to emphasize his gloating. Some outlet for his growing unease as Kane’s game improved. And some outlet for his underlying rage, always just under the surface, at Kane, the better scientist. The statue was supposed to be an assertion, even a slap in the face: I am here and I take up a lot of your space. Notice that!

  Instead, Kane had shrugged and dismissed it.

  I said, “Tell me again, Ajit, about Nataraja. What’s the significance of the flames on the great circle?”

  Ajit said quietly, “They represent the fire that des
troys the world.”

  Kane said, “Your turn, Ajit.”

  Such a small incident. But deep in my mind, where I was aware of it but not yet overtly affected, fear stirred.

  I was losing control here.

  Then the first minicap of data arrived.

  4. PROBE

  Mind uploads are still minds. They are not computer programs in the sense that other programs are. Although freed of biological constraints such as enzymes that create sleep, hunger, and lust, uploads are not free of habit. In fact, it is habit that creates enough structure to keep all of us from frenzied feedback loops. On the probe, my job was to keep habit strong. It was the best safeguard for those brilliant minds.

  “Time to sleep, gentlemen,” I said lightly. We had been gathered in the wardroom for sixteen hours straight, Kane and Ajit at their terminals, me sitting quietly, watching them. I have powers of concentration equal in degree, though not in kind, to their own. They do not suspect this. It has been hours since I put down my embroidery, but neither noticed.

  “Tirzah, not sleep now!” Kane snapped.

  “Now.”

  He looked up at me like a sulky child. But Kane is not a child; I don’t make that mistake. He knows an upload has to shut down for the cleansing program to run, a necessity to catch operating errors before they grow large enough to impair function. With all the radiation bathing the probe, the program is more necessary than ever. It takes a few hours to run through. I control the run cues.

  Ajit looked at me expectantly. It was his night. This, too, was part of habit, as well as being an actual aid to their work. More than one scientist in my care has had that critical flash of intuition on some scientific problem while in my arms. Upload sex, like its fleshy analogue, both stimulates and relaxes.