Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  "That might be prudent." They swarmed the airlock disk. Michael let go of the mesobot and popped out into familiar starlight last. The others were all talking at once; he counted to make sure they were all there, then connected to the mesobot again.

  The little lamps had come on again, this time steadily. They illuminated the space between the hulls with a bright, steady, yellow-white light. "Look!"

  There was another change happening too. The mesobot reported the presence of a faint gas pressure, rapidly rising. The gas was warm— in fact it was a mix of nitrogen and oxygen at the same temperature as the inside of Michael's suit.

  It was Michael's turn to swear, very quietly.

  "I think we've just been invited in," he said.

  * * *

  RUE WATCHED THE others slide through the black circle of the airlock. It was frightening to think that something inside the Lasa habitat knew they were here and was opening the way for them. On the other hand, Rue had always known she was just the finder of the Envy, not its real owner. The scattered habitats that made up the cycler had kept their secrets for almost two years now; without knowing where it came from or why it was here, she was forced to be humble. So her anxiety was mixed with relief at the thought that if the Envy's true masters appeared now, they could at least take the burden of doubt away from her.

  Her turn came and she flipped through the airlock with ease. She nearly ran into somebody's back and climbed over them to get a better view.

  The place was transformed. "Humidity, temp, pressure, oxy mix, they're all identical to our suit standard," Mike was saying. The interhull was lit up now too, in brilliant white light like the false sunlight the R.E. people favored. Rue dimmed her faceplate so she wouldn't have to squint.

  "Eerie," somebody said. Rue nodded; this cavity between the spheres was strangely like a place on Allemagne known as the Gallery. The Gallery was the last insulating space between the outer shells of the colony and the inner part, where the centrifuge and power plant resided. It was much bigger than this space, but perspective was tricky here due to the smooth reflective metal everywhere. If she just glanced around casually, though, the place had a weird familiarity to it. Almost like home.

  "I suggest we designate the airlock as bottom," said Herat. "We can string some lines up the sides so we can orient ourselves." The other men grunted agreement and soon were unreeling lines and jetting off around the sphere in pairs.

  Slowly, like a shy animal, one of the little habitat models was drifting in Rue's direction. She held onto the lip of the airlock and studied it. It was an elongated doughnut shape about sixty centimeters wide and a hundred long, made of some burnished white metal. It didn't match any of the Envy's habitats, so it was hard to get a sense of how big the object it modeled would be. But there was an obvious airlock etched in one end and a whole slew of tiny machines, intricately shaped, stuffed into the tubular doughnut hole. It glimmered like some fantastical toy; for a moment she fantasized about some day being able to hang this bauble over her son or daughter's crib. Of course, it might be solid and weigh five hundred kilos.

  For some almost superstitious reason, nobody had touched one of these models yet. Rue wasn't about to be the first. As it reached her she drew back, letting it parade slowly past.

  "The readings are pretty clear," said Michael. "No organics of any kind, just the perfect breathing mix for us."

  That got her attention. "Can we export it? Tank it and take it back to the Banshee?"

  "Please!" Uh oh, she'd set Herat off again. His suited figure jetted over to her. "If this is a first contact situation I hardly think we'd make a good impression by stealing their air."

  Chagrined, Rue fell back to the airlock. But Herat didn't know how dire their life-support situation was. Rue's inventory last night had revealed some cracked stack tubes, which was going to reduce the carrying capacity of the Banshee even further. She'd told Crisler about it, but so far the news hadn't percolated down. There was a good chance, though, that this would be their last EVA for a while.

  It was pointless to argue with Herat. If this air became crucial to their survival, she would requisition it; he would have no say in the matter. Better just to avoid the confrontation, since it would do no good.

  "If the air is breathable, we should at least conserve our suit supplies," she said. It was a small defiance, but saying it made her feel better.

  "Good point," said the professor. "Bequith? Can we take off these damnable head-clamps?"

  "Yes. We could even renew our suit supplies here; I doubt the Lasa would object to that."

  She threw Mike a grateful look, which he probably didn't see as he was in the process of taking off his helmet. She quickly did the same. Her first sniff of this alien air revealed a metallic tang and the faint sharpness she associated with cold and ice. But the air was warm.

  "Where's the heat coming from?"

  Mike clipped his helmet to a shoulder loop. "In there." He jerked a thumb at the inner sphere.

  Crisler and one of the marines had flown over to one of the black circles on the inner sphere. "What do you make of those?" asked Crisler. "Looks like airlocks covering the whole surface. Makes no sense."

  "Not human sense, maybe," said Herat. "I'm more interested in why the air is perfect for us. I know how; The lasers must have taken a spectroscopic reading through our faceplates. But why?"

  "Like Bequith said," said Crisler. "We were invited in."

  Herat was scowling. "That makes a lot less sense than you might think. And what sense it makes isn't good. You might think they want to talk— but Bequith and I have found ample evidence that symbolic communication is only really useful within a species; different intelligent species are usually so different that communication between them is useless at any level above threat/reward signals. We never have anything in common above basic bodily functions, so what's to talk about?"

  "What are you saying?"

  "Well, Admiral, ask yourself this: Under what circumstances does one organism invite a member of another species into a place?"

  Crisler looked alarmed. "When it's trapping the other for a meal."

  Herat nodded. "This place has already extracted quite a bit of information about us without asking."

  What Herat was saying was unsettling— but Mike shook his head.

  "They are asking," he said. "These open doors are an invitation more clear than a symbolic communication. So was the air. They're gestures of friendliness."

  "So is the scent on a Venus's flytrap," said Herat.

  One of the marines shouted. Rue looked over in time to see him leaping away from the inner sphere. The airlock disk next to him had irised open.

  "I just reached out to touch the thing and it opened!" he said. He had his sidearm out and ready.

  Silently, all across the surface of the inner sphere, other airlocks opened.

  No one moved. All conversation had ceased and they waited to see what would emerge.

  Rue was in a position to look directly into the first airlock that had opened. Unlike the outer lock, this and the others had collapsed from disks into rings around the lip of a round opening. The magnetic liquid spiked up in cones and fantastical arcs that must follow the reshaped magnetic field. They were perfectly still, though the surface of the liquid roiled like oil.

  The airlock opened into a can-shaped chamber about four meters long and half that wide. At its far end was another, closed, airlock disk. Floating in the center of the space was a large, perfect ball of water.

  "The trap opens," muttered the marine.

  "Quiet, Barendts," said Crisler.

  "Only some of them opened," said Mike quietly. He and Herat had drifted together. Rue jetted over to them; she felt safer next to these experienced alien-hunters.

  "I wonder why that is," said Herat, also quietly. "We need to get around the other side and see what's happening there." Rue felt a thrill of fear when he said that; something might be emerging opposite them while they hu
ng here gaping.

  Crisler had heard and motioned two marines to move. They reluctantly jetted off around the small horizon of the sphere, appearing a minute later from the other direction. The one Crisler had called Barendts shook his blond head. "Some open doors; funny things inside, but nothing moving."

  "What kind of things?" asked Herat.

  "Balls of water with various amounts of mud in it. Dirt in a couple. Sand. That kind of thing."

  "This is insane," said Crisler.

  Mike and Herat were grinning at one another. "Actually, it makes perfect sense," said Herat. "This is an attempt to communicate, though there's no way to know whether the ultimate aim is hostile or not. In any other situation I'd say it was a trap— but we have evidence of multispecies cooperation outside. Maybe…"

  "This? Communication?" Crisler shook his head.

  "Not symbolic communication," said Herat. "Physical communication— the kind most species use between one another. It's more universal and reliable than language. Of course the Lasa would use it for first contact! The only reason we never have is because we're…"

  "Stupid?" said Mike with a small grin.

  "I was going to say, 'infected with a number of academic prejudices, " said Herat. "But 'stupid' will do."

  They were acting like such boys now. It was infuriating, considering everything that was at stake. "Speaking of stupid," said Rue, "are we going to investigate or float here gabbing? Let's check these things out."

  "Not so fast," said Herat in his most condescending tone. "We don't know which questions to ask yet."

  "What questions? Just send the bot into one of these doorways!"

  Herat looked indignant, but Mike had that subtle little smile going again. "I can do that," he said. He concentrated for a moment and the glittering little mesobot scooted over to the nearest open door.

  Rue accessed the inscape feed from the bot. It roved around the surface of the meter-sized ball of pure water that was the only contents of the chamber. There was no piece of scrip with a message written on it, no readout screens, no arrows pointing anywhere— but there was a latch next to the inner door, similar to the one on the outside airlock.

  They retrieved the bot and sent it into several more open doors. Rue watched the proceedings with growing impatience. Michael and Herat had turned into plodding researchers like the rest of the science team— taking no chances, noting down pointless details, like small differences in lighting and temperature in the various cells. Each cylindrical chamber held a different sample of material: salt water in one, epsom-salted water in another, a cloud of dry silicate sand in a third. None of it even hinted at a way to control the vast cycler scattered through thousands of kilometers of space around her. It was all beside the point, but the scientists didn't seem to care.

  Finally, after Rue had descended to nagging, Herat shrugged and said, "Let's try one of the inner doors. The question is, which one?"

  "What do we need most?" she shot back. "That should be our prime consideration."

  "That's shortsighted, Rue. We need to know what kind of question this place is asking us before we can answer."

  "It's asking us what we like. Salt water or pure water, or no water," she said. "Isn't that right?"

  "Well… probably…"

  "So what do we like? Pure water, right?"

  "Well…"

  "As captain of the Envy I am ordering you to pick a chamber for us to investigate further."

  The professor glowered, but after a minute said, "The pure-water one, then. We really don't know enough to—"

  She held up a hand, conscious of Crisler's eyes on her. "We are not going to know the right answer, Professor, because we've been given a choice. This isn't about what the Lasa want us to do— it's about what we want. Let's try the water room."

  "All right. Let's trip the switch."

  Crisler held up a hand. "Not you, Professor. We don't know whether it's safe."

  "I'll do it," said Barendts. Crisler nodded and the marine entered the small cylindrical room. He contorted his way around the water sphere and, without preamble, tripped the switch next to the inside airlock.

  A splashing sound echoed through the interhull, like many glasses of water being tipped on the floor simultaneously. Rue had been watching Barendts, so she'd missed it: All the other other open doors had collapsed closed.

  "Getting power readings from inside," said Michael.

  "It's not opening," said Barendts.

  "Weird," said another of the marines. "This is just weird."

  "Hey! There's more doors opening!"

  Rue looked away from the chamber containing Barendts. All across the sphere, other round airlocks had opened. These were different ones from those that had been open a moment ago. She smelled metallic odors, ozone, and sulphur. All the new doors contained floating balls of mud.

  "Question. Response," muttered Herat. "New question."

  "But what was the question?" asked Crisler. "And what was our response?"

  Herat shook his head. "I… have no idea."

  * * *

  "WE ARE ONE step ahead of the souvenir-collectors," the professor said some hours later, as they were settling in to the little camp of balloon-tents they'd tethered next to the airlock. Nothing new had happened since Barendts opened the inner door; the Lasa machinery seemed quiescent, so Michael had gone with two of the marines and brought back the rest of the science team and some supplies. Between this place and Lake Flaccid, he mused, they could have years of investigation ahead of them.

  Except, of course, that they would only be here a few more months.

  "Look at this place," Herat went on, gesturing through the mesh of the tent foyer at the smooth metal walls. "Are you really going to make this into a habitat of your cycler, Rue?"

  She sighed. "You've got me all wrong. What would be the point of reworking this place? It would take more equipment to scour out and refit these habitats than it would to ship up new quarters."

  Herat grunted. "It's just a shame that this place is so inaccessible."

  Rue stretched and yawned. "Inaccessible? Only to your people, Dr. Herat."

  "Uh oh, there they go," Michael said to Barendts as Herat worked up a response. The marine grinned; of all Crisler's men, he was the only one who hadn't become frosty in his relations with Michael since the sabotage.

  Michael climbed out of the tent and did a hand-walk up one of the ropes next to the inner sphere. He felt they were safe here, at least as long as they didn't flip any switches. This place seemed purely reactive; their act of entering through the airlock had stimulated a response, as had other actions they'd taken. As long as they touched nothing, nothing would happen.

  It wasn't a frightening environment, anyway. Not like Dis had been. Dis was a place of death, so old that objects that had come together in the ancient past had become fused. He remembered finding the mummified corpse of some kind of animal, cemented to a floor in the tunnels.

  It had been stupid of him to call the kami of that place. Of course it would scar him.

  Having reached the horizon of the inner sphere, Michael let himself drift out into the center of the interhull space. One of the little models floated nearby; they'd spent an hour photographing those from every angle, but still no one had touched one. To do so, he suspected, would be to awaken some new Lasa response.

  He felt an old itch at the base of his brain. The NeoShinto AI was awake, preparing to skew his neural pathways in the direction of a mystical experience. All he had to do was give it a subject to focus on.

  Michael hesitated. This was what he had come here to do. Ever since Dis, Michael had felt uncomfortable in his own skin; he was adrift, because the kami of Dis dominated his consciousness. He had wracked his brains, but could think of no other way to get that feeling back than to find and contact stronger kami.

  He looked back at the camp. Herat was looking at him; the professor nodded slightly. Herat knew what he was going to try. Michael felt a surge o
f affection for the older man and grinned. It would annoy the hell out of Crisler if he realized what Michael was doing— but they were on the Envy now, and Michael was under Rue's protection. Remembering this decided him.

  Jetting over the horizon so that the camp was out of sight, he found a spot where the cables the marines had strung weren't visible. All he saw was the curving Lasa space itself. One of the marines followed him, looking suspicious, but Michael turned his back on the man. He opened his eyes wide, let go of verbal thought and tried to become pure awareness.

  The AI took over smoothly; Michael felt his consciousness expand to fill the cool geometric perfection of the habitat. He thought he heard a sighing laughter echoing off the chamber's walls— the sound of something ancient shrugging awake for a moment.

  For a few seconds he felt a swelling sense of wonder; that wasn't hard, considering where he was. He waited for it to translate into something more, but it didn't happen. All he got was a sense of something watching— a mind vast and cool and ultimately indifferent.

  Michael blinked, staring at the metal walls. No. He couldn't leave things as they were. He had to find the kami again. He shut his eyes and consciously awoke the implants. Show me!

  Nothing happened.

  Michael squeezed his hands into fists. He felt trapped. But it was not the implants that were at fault, he knew. How could he find the kami anymore, now that he no longer believed in the doctrines of Permanence?

  For a long time he hung there, bent over, hearing faint sounds of conversation echoing over the horizon, but uncaring to listen. Then, gradually, shame overtook him. Here he was in one of the most incredible alien artifacts of all time and he wasn't even looking at it. He was hardly here at all, in fact, so preoccupied was he with his own problems. No wonder he couldn't sense any kami; he hadn't formed any connection with this place.

  Maybe. But if I did, would the kami help me?

  He stared upward for several minutes, deliberately taking note of the fine details of the metal walls, the drifting models. Then he shook his head, shrugged at the marine who had watched this performance, and jetted back to the campsite.