The Avatar

by Anderson, Poul

  "I seek to bring into my dream-currents the knowledge of how your kind first came to the transport engines and to information about the Others."

  "Why, you've heard," she said, surprised. "We simply found the machine in the Solar System, the same as your interplanetary explorers earlier found the one that orbits Centrum."

  Earlier? she wondered. What does that mean? Simultaneity is not a concept that applies across interstellar distances. Moreover, it turns out that the "T" in "T machine" stands not only for "Tipler" and "Transport," but also for "Time." The Betans themselves aren't sure whether, in a passage through a different system, they visit their future or their past. For that matter, we don't know what our temporal relationship is to our colony on Demeter. All that astronomers can determine is that the three gates open on the same general era of this galaxy.

  And, for whatever it's worth, which may be nothing, we have the fact that the Betans have behind them centuries more of being scientific-civilized than we do on Earth -if we are civilized yet.

  "That is a truth cast onto a reef and bleached dry," Fidelio said. "I am in search of the living coral. It must have been comparable on Earth. Still, the wave it raised bore a shape peculiar to your kind, in whatever condition contemporary humanity was. And the ripples cannot have died out. I have been reading histories, Joelle, but they are gorged with references to events and personalities that mean nothing to me."

  "I see," she answered slowly. ("Comprendo" = "I grasp." English and Spanish idioms are not equivalent. As for his, at sea he would have said, "My teeth close on it," ashore he would have said, "I sense it in my vibrissae.")

  "Well," she went on, "I hardly think I can give you a complete answer, when I myself am rather lost. But let's make an attempt." She stroked her chin, pondering. "Yes, I remember a documentary on the whole subject, intended for schools, which contains much original material. I'll try to retrieve it."

  Like every apartment in the Wheel, hers had a computer terminal, with display and printout. The piece she had in mind was such a classic, and went back such a number of years-back to when folk expected a permanent population here, including children-that she supposed it was in the data bank. She activated the keyboard and tapped out her request.

  It was.

  VIII

  (View of the machine seen from afar, a thousand-kilometer length like a needle afloat in space, dwarfed by the Milky Way.)

  NARRATOR

  -unmanned probes reported indications of something curious, orbiting the sun on the same track as Earth but a hundred and eighty degrees off, so that it was always on the opposite side. A flyby confirmed that it was strange indeed. No asteroid could have a perfectly cylindrical shape. Most certainly, none could be so massive, nor spin so fast. .

  (An astrophysicist, famous at the time, speaks from his desk, occasionally screening an animated diagram for illustration.)

  IONESCU

  -should not be possible. That thing is as dense as a collapsar, barely short of the black hole condition. Its atoms must have been compressed down to where they are no longer true atoms but nearly continuous nuclear matter, the stuff we call neutronium. Only the gravitational field of a larger star than Sol, falling in on itself after its fires are extinct, can bring them to that condition. The cylinder cannot. Gigantic though it is, its mass is far too small-in fact, not enough to perturb the planets identifiably. Besides, a natural body would form a spheroid.

  Yet there the thing is. Forces of a kind we know nothing about shaped it, gave it its unbelievable rotational energy, and hold it together. I have no doubt whatsoever that here is the product of a technology farther advanced from ours than ours is from the Stone Age.

  (Scenes of excitement, speeches, crowds, demonstrations, sermons, prayer meetings everywhere on Earth and in the satellites. Excerpt from a press conference held by Manuel Fernández Dávila, Donald Napier, and Saburo Tonari, the three men who are to go, the most nearly international team that chaos throughout much of the world has left it possible to assemble. Liftoff of the shuttle, blast vivid against an austere cordillera. Rendezvous with Discoverer, the ship, and transfer to her.

  (Scenes during the flight, which at that time took weeks, mostly in free fall. Shots through the ports: the cylinder waxing in view until its enormousness begins to be apparent and the glowing attendants are visible. Spacesuited men go outside, at the ends of tethers, to take pictures and instrumental readings. They speak to Earth via a relay which has been orbited especially for them. The words are usually dry, but shaken by awe.)

  FERNANDEZ-DAVILA

  -they are not satellites. They don't go around the cylinder, they stay in place relative to the sun and each other. God knows how that is done, but we guess they're held by some of the power that keeps the main body in one piece. We've counted ten. They appear featureless except for the different wavelengths they emit. They're spaced around the spin axis of the cylinder-which is exactly normal to the ecliptic-at various distances and orientations, the farthest about a million kilometers out, the closest about a thousand. When we watch the whole system through our main telescope, it's a pretty sight. Well, anything astronomical is. .

  (At a later date, when the goal is looming.)

  TONARI

  -glowing attendants are definitely spheres, diameter estimated at ten kilometers. They don't seem to be material. More like balls of energy, nexuses in a force-field. We have confirmed that they are not absolutely stationary. The configuration changes, extremely slowly but continuously, according to a plan we cannot decipher.

  (Outside view taken by Tonari in EVA: a glimpse of the ship, a straight look at the cylinder, whose length now fills the screen, and a pair of its moons which are not moons, and behind and around everything, the stars.)

  NAPIER

  (meanwhile, aboard)

  -satisfactory approach curve. We'll swing around it at a distance of ninety-five hundred kilometers, recede to one hundred thousand, establish ourselves in a circular orbit, and -Name of God! What's that?

  VOICE

  (melodious, androgynous, speaking Spanish like an educated

  denizen of Lima)

  Your attention, please. Your attention, please. This is a message to you from the builders of the device you are seeking. You are welcome here. But you must change your course. Your present path is dangerous to you. Prepare for acceleration and stand by for instructions. Please record. You will need the information you are about to receive. Please record. In five minutes, these words will repeat for that purpose, followed by the necessary data. They are words of welcome, of joy that you have finally reached this far. Thank you.

  (Interior scene. Fernández-Dávila has started the movie cameras for the sake of the history books.)

  NAPIER

  How in Christ's name-?

  FERNANDEZ-DAVILA

  Probably sonic vibrations set up in the hull. No trick at all for them-Saburo! Saburo, get your ass back in the airlock!

  (No repeat of the greeting; this documentary has used the replay that was promised, since the original was captured only at the end of a radio beam two hundred and ten kilometers long, after which it was passed an equal distance to Earth, losing quality along the whole way.)

  VOICE

  -understand that the truth will not be easy to make clear. Now, while you calm yourselves, you should retreat to approximately five hundred thousand kilometers and take orbit. Otherwise you will not likely see your homes again. Here are the timing and the vectors for you- (Miscellaneous shots, exterior and interior, taken during the

  days that follow: the titanic artifact, stars, Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds, the sister galaxy in Andromeda, the men, who somehow continue their routines, actually joking or playing games, in between grave discussions of what they have learned each time a message comes.)

  VOICE

  (excerpts)

  You hear a kind of computer-effector system, a robot, if you will. No living being could or should abide out here, awaiting your
arrival.

  The universe is a cornucopia of life. .

  The builders have existed through age after age. They wish the cosmos well, but for that very reason do not seek to be overlords, let alone gods. Best that each race make its own destiny, tragic though that may prove. Only thus can it grow, in strength, mind, and spirit. Too, the builders have lives of their own to live, dreams of their own to pursue. Thus you will hear little more than this about them, ever. To you, to countless beings more among the suns, they must remain the unknown Others. .

  Yet they are interested in you. They love you. Plain to see, they have observed you at length and in depth. Having made your way here, you are free to use their engine for interstellar travel. You will be guided to a system wherein is a planet akin to your mother world, save that it has borne no sentience to claim it -yours for the taking, if you choose. . .

  NARRATOR

  When Discoverer's transmissions reached Earth, few indeed were the persons who kept a measure of calm.

  (The office of the astrophysicist)

  IONESCU

  -speculations that began to be heard when the flyby observations came in, seem now to be confirmed. As far as we can tell, that thing is a Tipler machine.

  I call it that in honor of the theoretician who, extending the work of Kerr and others, published in 1974 a paper on this exact subject, which afterward he pursued farther with imagination as well as mathematical rigor. True, he was forced to make certain simplifying assumptions. However, he did use strict, well-established principles of physics to show that transport across space.. time was conceptually sound though apparently requiring conditions impossible to achieve in the real universe. (Smiling) I'm afraid the proof is rather esoteric. What it amounts to, in everyday terms, is this. A cylinder of ultra-dense matter, spinning at a speed in excess of one-half light's, will generate a field. Not a force-field, in the proper sense. Call it, instead, a region in which some quantities vary according to your position. A body passing through that field can be transported directly from event to event. In more popular language, depending on what path it takes, it can go from any point in space-time to any other in range of the machine.

  As I said, this effect seemed to demand impossible conditions. For instance, it called for matter densities many orders of magnitude greater than that of nucleons themselves, such as might conceivably exist within a black hole but nowhere else. I therefore suspect that the density we have measured for yonder cylinder, high though it be, is only a mean; that it increases within, to the point where black hole-type phenomena occur; that at the very center is an actual singularity. How the Others have achieved this, we can only guess-we can speculate that the weak energy condition may, after all, in the right circumstances be violated-and most likely our guesses are dead wrong. With a little more confidence, we think that the finite length of this real-world object limits the range of its effect: though obviously that range is interstellar and perhaps it is interepochal.

  We are also beginning to get an inkling of how the cylinder stays in position with respect to Earth. That position is not stable. Planetary perturbations should cause a body there to drift away from it in a fairly short time. Yet presumably the device has been where it is for centuries at least. What gives it its station-keeping capability? Analyzing available data, we think probably there is a continuous interaction with the interplanetary and the galactic magnetic fields, though this too must take place throughout awesome distances.

  I hope to live long enough to see us gain a little more knowledge about the creation the Others have added to Creation. We may even, at last, find a way to make our findings comprehensible to the layman-or to ourselves.

  (The professorial countenance glows) But no matter now. What matters above everything else today is that we have been given the chance for a fresh beginning!

  NARRATOR

  Before Discoverer returned home, the Voice offered to conduct her through the star gate and back. As Fernández-Dávila said afterward, "How could we not have accepted?"

  (Views of a vessel which later traced the route, photographed from a companion ship. They are interspersed with simulations and animations, as well as pictures taken during the maiden venture: This and the narration make clear what happens. The spacecraft moves from sphere to sphere in a precise order.)

  VOICE

  The globes are simply markers, navigational aids. With their help, you can follow the exact path through the transport field which will bring you to the place prepared for you.

  Have care! Any different path will take you to quite a different destination. It may well be that no machine exists there. You would perish somewhere out in those light-years. When the builders wish to establish a new foothold, they must send all needful materials and equipment through an existing engine and make a new one at the new site, before they can return.

  Even if you emerged at a machine, you would never find your way back. Consider. Ten globes, taken in their various orders, define 3,628,800 paths. In truth the combinations are many more, since not every path requires passing by every beacon; if you ignore the markers altogether, the number becomes virtually infinite. You would blunder blind until you died, or more probably until you emerged where no machine was.

  You must have noted that the configuration of the spheres is not constant, but gradually changes. Doubtless you have guessed that that is to compensate for the changing positions of the stars. Do not worry about it. Simply follow the same order of close passage by each, as you have been instructed. Likewise, the correct order at the far end of this trip of yours will always bring you back from there to here. You will note that it is entirely unlike the course which took you from here to there.

  Beware, repeat, beware of deviating from either of these patterns. Send unmanned probes on random paths if you like, but never a live crew, for it could never return.

  (The study of a famous philosopher)

  SAMUELSON

  -I don't believe any human is equipped to understand the Others. They must have what is infinitely more important than a science and technology superior to ours by perhaps millions of years. I feel convinced that they have superior minds . . . and, yes, I suppose, superior, nobler souls. I cannot believe they'd exist for such reaches of time, with such powers as are theirs, and not evolve.

  Nevertheless, in the case of the T machines, I'll risk a guess about their motives. Why hasn't their Voice described any paths to us except the ones between Sol and this single distant star? Why hasn't it even hinted at what the mathematical relation is between a given path and two given points in space-time, so we can work out how to get from A where we're at to a B which we'd like to visit? Why, indeed, has the Voice been silent since that first advent of humans?

  I think this is part and parcel of their doctrine of non-interference.

  Think. They put the Solar System machine opposite Earth, and we didn't dream it existed till we had developed a substantial capability in space. But the machine in the other system orbits much more handily, in a stable path, sixty degrees ahead of the planet we'll probably be colonizing, clearly visible to any astronomers there. However, apparently no astronomers, no truly thinking (The view settles on a point of sapphire, infinitely lovely.) creatures, are native to it: nobody that might be lured by the sight into feverish, unbalanced efforts or a deadly struggle for control

  The Voice said the Others love us. They must; they have given us a whole new world. But they must love all sentient races. I suspect a breed like ours, with its history of war, oppression, rapine, and exploitation, would bring disaster if it burst overnight into the galaxy. I suspect also that we are not unusually bad or shortsighted, that many a species would become an equal menace if it got the chance.

  At the same time, the Others seemingly refuse to take us, or anybody, under tutelage. I am sure that, from their viewpoint, they have far better things to do. And from the viewpoint of our well-being, they may feel it would be wrong to domesticate us.

  So t
hey leave us our free will, they permit us to use their star gates, but they make no further gifts. We must endure the frustration of seeing Alpha Centauri and Sirius shining still unattainable in our skies, until we have groped our own way out into the cosmos. I hope that they hope the long, cooperative effort that this requires will mature us a little. .

  (View of a spacecraft completing her path. Suddenly she vanishes. View of the T machine in the Phoebean System. Suddenly the spacecraft appears, about half a million kilometers from the cylinder.

  (Shots taken on the original faring. Fernández-Dávila, Tonari, and Napier stare from their cramped cabin. They babble. Two of them offer prayers. Presently they master themselves and look outward with trained eyes. A groundling cannot see constellations in space; the visible stars are too many. An astronaut can. Here, none are familiar. After a while, the men think they can puzzle out a few, changed though the shapes are; and extragalactic objects do not appear different. They reckon roughly that they have gone more than one hundred and less than five hundred light-years northwest of Sol.)

  VOICE

  -The planet that will interest you most is in the sky hard by the Crab Nebula. . .

  NARRATOR

  The world we have since named Demeter- (Stopped-down view of Phoebus. View of Discoverer's cabin and three men stunned with glory.)

  VOICE