Permanence

by Karl Schroeder

  But why would she want to? Rue looked back at the giant cabbage, wondering what question she was supposed to be answering by tripping the switches here. These living things were obviously not attempts to re-create humans from their DNA; unless the Lasa mind behind this place was an idiot, it could see that its productions didn't resemble people. Its previous questions seemed to have been about human preferences in environment— what kind of water they liked and what kind of soil. By that logic, this time the question was 'what kind of food do you like'?

  Tentatively, she broke a small piece of leaf off the cabbage and nibbled it. Herat would kill her if he saw her doing this— but the mesobot had investigated this thing and said it wasn't poisonous.

  It had no real taste, which was reassuring, actually. She chewed and swallowed.

  "Okay." Of all the weird life-forms in these chambers, this one seemed most benign. That made her answer clear, at least on a gut level. It was increasingly clear to her that it was the gut-level answer that the Lasa were looking for.

  She reached out, hesitated, and pressed the switch next to the inner airlock door.

  With a splash the door irised open, really before she could register the fact that she had made an irreversible and maybe critical, decision. Rue found herself staring into a new chamber, one level further into the inner sphere of the habitat.

  "Well, well, what have we here?" She pulled herself in.

  This chamber was spherical, about four meters across. It had eight airlock doors in its walls. Floating in front of each airlock was a model, like the ones in the interhull. These models, however, were made of something transparent and each one held a tiny ball of leaves and earth, lit by tiny pinprick lamps inside it.

  "Oh boy." This was major. She glanced back up the cylinders, wondering whether she should get the others in here now. Like as not Herat would want her locked up for what she'd just done— but damn it, this was her ship…

  The outermost airlock door was closed.

  "Hey!" Rue flew back to the door and pressed her hand against it. Her fist deformed the liquid slightly, then slid about friction-lessly on it. She couldn't push through it and there was no switch on this side.

  "Oh, Meadow-Rue, you've done it this time." She almost laughed, it was so pathetic. She was on her own now.

  Rue returned to the round chamber. Her heart was pounding, but she was more excited than scared now. The Lasa had locked her in, but she didn't think arms were going to come out of the wall to dissect her. If that had been the Lasa's intention, they would have done it a year ago, when she first arrived here.

  No, this room was another question and she needed to answer it. Summoning her determination, she hand-walked over to the nearest model and examined it gingerly. This was a half-meter wide sphere, a little crystal ball, really, with a miniature version of the cabbage growing from a wet ball of earth in its center. There were little openings in the crystal; she put her nose to one and sniffed. It smelled like a terrarium, of wet soil.

  The little plant was lit by eight tiny lights that were mounted in the outer crystal. It was beautiful, but what was most intriguing was the tiny black disks near the lights.

  If Rue was right, then she knew exactly what the Lasa were asking her this time. Excitement mounting, she went to another model— this one a less beautiful can-shaped thing.

  She could only see through the transparent end caps of this model. Its soil and water were distributed around the inside walls, with tiny grasslike plants innermost, basking under the light of a string of lamps strung down the can's center.

  She checked the other models quickly. There was a cube, a doughnut shape, a flattened sphere. She came back to the can, though it was really the ugliest of the lot.

  "This is perfect," she said aloud and pressed the switch for the door next to the can.

  * * *

  THEY WERE ALL outside now. The black airlock liquid had expanded in arcs and curving spikes, until it filled the entire interhull; the last marine was literally squeezed out through the lock. Michael now hung in space with the others, their jittery spotlights flitting across the placid face of the habitat as they talked excitedly about this development.

  He felt sick. Rue was in there, devoured by the black liquid. There was no doubt in Michael's mind that she had tripped a switch and been caught like a mouse in a trap. He shouldn't have left her to brood.

  Crisler's voice came loudly through his earphones. "Okay, people, we're falling back to one kilometer. The Banshee's weapons are on-line and trained on this place. If it looks like it's going to open fire on us, we'll have to hit it first with everything we've got."

  "That's insane," said Herat. "We haven't found any evidence of hostile intent in this place."

  "Except that your precious Lasa have just eaten Rue Cassels."

  "Beware of using loaded terms, Admiral. We don't know what just happened. We certainly don't know it was a hostile act."

  "You were the one urging caution before."

  "I was saying we shouldn't act without certain knowledge and I still am."

  "Sirs," said one of the marines. "The airlock's overflowing."

  "Everybody back! Now!"

  Reluctantly, Michael turned on his maneuvering thrusters and jetted back with the rest. When he was in place at Crisler's one-kilometer line, he turned and looked back at the habitat.

  It was hard to see unless you knew what to look for, but the smooth black of the habitat's hull was being replaced by the oily shimmer of the magnetic liquid. It was being pumped out through the airlock and was slicking rapidly over the furred hull. Frightening as it was to look at, Michael had to admire the genius behind it: Using ferrofluids, the Lasa could make their airlock grow big enough to bring the entire habitat inside it. Its spiky outthrusts showed that this liquid had to follow the lines of the magnetic fields— it couldn't be filling all the space under its surface. He pictured a large and growing chamber inside; anything could be happening there.

  "It's swallowing itself," he said. Herat grunted in response.

  "Explain, Bequith."

  "This looks more defensive than aggressive, Admiral. Of course, we can't see what's going on underneath, but we were in that situation before."

  He watched as the oily blackness ate away the letters of the Lasa writing. Soon the entire paragraph was gone and the black marched on to meet itself on the opposite side of the sphere.

  A new voice cut in— one of Crisler's staff, calling from the Banshee. "Sir, the surface you see is actually moving five centimeters above the actual hull. It's a very thin layer of ferrofluid, supported from below by some pretty impressive magnetic gymnastics. But a picosecond blast from the main laser will open a three-meter hole in that stuff. We can do it at any time."

  "Ready to go in, sir," said Barendts.

  "Hang on there," snapped Herat. "If it's all that thin, it's obviously no threat."

  "Maybe," said Crisler. "At the same time, it has one of our people. I for one am not inclined to leave her in there."

  Michael looked at the habitat. It was completely covered in the black oil now; there were no telltale words to signify that it was a physical object that could be written on— there was only a complete absence of stars in a starburst shape to show that anything was there at all.

  The staffer's voice cut in. "Sir! Registering a change. Heat levels are rising in a number of spots. No change on the surface, but the ferrofluid's radiating, probably from sources underneath. We might be able to image the sources."

  "If anything breaks through the surface, shoot it off," said Crisler. "Marines, prepare to enter the thing."

  "Sir, wait," said the staffer.

  "What the hell is it?"

  "Sir… it's changing shape."

  * * *

  SIX CHAMBERS IN, Rue found the control panel.

  The previous rooms had been more and more specific; when it came, this one wasn't a surprise.

  Rue moved in a daze, a kind of ecstasy. She knew e
xactly what was happening and it was the fulfillment of every possibility that Jentry's Envy had ever hinted at. The outside world, the past, her worries, even hunger and thirst, had all dissolved in the wonder of the present.

  This chamber glittered with light and hummed with sound. It had eight doors, as had the others. The auroral glows and sparkling-edged images projected all around her were beautiful and alien, but she knew their purpose. They were the question that followed her last answer.

  She moved slowly into the chamber and entered a region of focused sound. The tones were ordered, a kind of wonderful chorus, and when she moved they shifted and modulated. It was like the air itself held little clouds of sound and she could poke her head into one or another and hear its particular song.

  Sadly, it was not practical. Herat would have spent a whole career in this little space, writing dissertations on the use of holographic sound to convey metric information. Mike would have heard endless kami in it. She was with Mike on this one.

  Hulking near the next door was a large metal frame, surrounded with interpenetrating rings like one of those medieval globes of the heavens. At its center the whole contraption held a set of straps and manacles in places where they could be clamped around arms, legs, neck, torso. It looked very disturbing, like a high-tech torture device, but when she figured out what it was, Rue was actually tempted to try it. Herat would be even more fascinated by this thing: a display and input device that used physical pressure, orientation and position to convey and read information. A full-body joystick.

  There were two places whose models she couldn't figure out at all; two which were strictly visual and beautiful, but whose input component eluded her. At the seventh door, she found the one she needed.

  From outside, this area of the chamber had a kind of polarized sheen to it. When she glided into the space it defined, though, she found herself surrounded by stars. The holography was beautiful and precise; she could faintly see the rest of the chamber through it.

  Also in this space were several little pens, more like chopsticks. She didn't know whether they were real or projected until she picked one up. It was cool metal, smooth and comfortable to hold. She took another, held them like chopsticks and reached out to pluck a star from the air.

  To her amazement, the whole display zoomed in the blink of an eye. Before her was a blazing star, its tiny retinue of planets twinkling next to it. Dozens of tiny crosshairs floated in the display; they could represent asteroids, ships, or colonies. She felt that she was seeing a processed telescopic view and not something completely made up.

  She waved the chopsticks and the star retreated to its original position.

  Hmm… Rue looked around until she found another set of tiny crosshairs. It was down by her feet, very faint. She reached down and plucked it.

  Jentry's Envy soared into view around her. She recognized Lake Flaccid, the red cube and there was the Banshee, balloon-sides glowing with internal light.

  Rue wiped her eyes and looked about for the Lasa sphere.

  There it was, superimposed over something cylindrical and familiar from the previous chambers she'd navigated. Yes. She was right about what was happening. She selected the sphere and it expanded around her.

  Instead of an inner sphere made of metal and with airlock doors in it, though, she found herself floating above a giant sphere of light, with meridianal lines dividing it into many sections. Within each translucent section, small models glowed.

  It's a menu. Laughing, she selected an element and it zoomed out around her— leaving a new sphere, its elements composed of variations on the item she had chosen.

  She zoomed out, took one chopstick and waved it. It left a glowing line in space. She signed her name in thin air and laughed again.

  Then she navigated down the menus until she found a little image of herself and she picked it up and deposited it outside the whole sphere.

  The airlock below her blew outward in a big bubble, which opened, swallowed her and her display and closed again. From outside it she suddenly heard a tremendous crunching sound, like a giant's molars consuming a building. And she was moving.

  That was okay; she knew where she was going. Rue was in charge of her ship at last.

  * * *

  "IT'S LENGTHENING OUT," said the staffer. "Becoming more cylindrical." Michael could see that with his own eyes now. The black surface was bulking up in places, then the bulges subsided again. It looked for all the world like a man dressing in a too-small survival bag.

  "Sir?" asked Barendts.

  "Hang on," said Crisler. "I need to know what it's doing."

  "The heat signatures are intense," said the staffer. "We're getting radar showing all kinds of turmoil in there, sir. Very large masses in rapid motion."

  "What kind? I need more information, damn it."

  "Um… I think it would be unwise to send anyone in there at this time, sir. They'd be minced."

  A space-suited figure jetted over to Michael. "What do you think?" asked Herat over a private channel.

  "She triggered some kind of transformation, that's for sure," said Michael. "But it doesn't make any sense, based on where we were on the sequence. The Lasa were asking us something about how our life is organized, but why would the answer lead to this?"

  "Maybe they're like the autotrophs," said Herat. "If we replied that we ate life like them, they might go ballistic. After all, wouldn't that be a major part of their assessment? Seeing what kind of risk we are?"

  "I prefer not to believe that they're paranoid, sir."

  "You prefer to think she's still alive," said Herat quietly. "So do I, Michael."

  "We need to do something!"

  "I know. But I don't know what."

  The habitat had finished reshaping itself. It was much bigger now and shaped like a shaggy can. Now something started to bud away from one end. A large sphere, black as everything else, but…

  Michael spotted a little dot of red on that sphere. The dot grew to become a letter of Lasa writing. Then a whole word emerged.

  "The habitat's reappearing!" he shouted.

  "I'll be damned," whispered Herat. "It's squirting itself out."

  Over the next several minutes, the original Lasa habitat emerged from the end of the black cylinder. The black liquid was draining off it in an orderly way. The habitat seemed unchanged by the strange transformation that had taken place.

  "It's given birth," said Herat. He began to laugh. "And what a bunch of nervous fathers we were!"

  "Keep the lasers ready," said Crisler. "Marines, check out the Lasa sphere."

  "Sir." The squad jetted away, the mesobot following them. Michael watched them approach the red-lettered sphere from its perspective. His head was spinning. Just what had happened here?

  The marines found the airlock, now reverted back to its original condition. They stuck some periscopes through it, then one pushed the mesobot in. Michael's view suddenly went black, then came back as the little bot entered the interhull.

  Except it was an interhull no longer. The interior of the black Lasa sphere was almost empty— just a smooth collection of arcing reflections from the metal walls. There were only two objects in here now.

  One was a large black sphere of roiling ferrofluid, maybe eight meters across. It drifted near the far end of the sphere.

  The other object was harder to figure out. It glowed with faery light, even seeming to have wings, or fans of auroral light around it. It too was a sphere, only this sphere was made of crystal or glass.

  Inside it Rue Cassels moved in a slow but purposeful dance. Her space suit's helmet was off and he could clearly see the huge grin on her face.

  "She's alive," he said.

  "Sir, look! The black, it's peeling off the cylinder now!"

  Michael brought his view back from the mesobot. Spotlights had the new cylinder outlined and in their glow he could clearly see the black liquid draining away from a bright metal hull. As it crept away from the end caps of the c
ylinder it revealed glass and the spotlights refracted into some kind of open interior.

  "It's a habitat," murmured Herat. "It's built us a habitat."

  "Yes, Professor."

  It was Rue. Her voice sounded dreamy, jubilant. "It built us a new home, according to my specs. And it's showed me the origin of Jentry's Envy and its course. This habitat is for humans, Professor. It's ours, as part of the Lasa's crew. Jentry's Envy was a gift all along, you see. All we had to do was unwrap it."

  Michael turned on his jets and headed for the Lasa habitat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Herat jetting toward the new one— curiosity getting the better of him, as always. Crisler was shouting for them to remain where they were, but Michael just wanted to make sure Rue was all right and tell her how happy he was that she had succeeded at finding her dream and desperate necessity.

  "Decant Max," shouted Rue. "Bring 'em all out! We're going to have a damned big party! And then Jentry's Envy is open for business!"

  Behind Michael, Crisler and his men didn't move. For once, the admiral gave no orders.

  PART FOUR

  Dinner with the Autotroph

  18

  RUE AWOKE TO the sound of birdsong.

  It was something she had heard in recordings, or synthesized, many times. The first time she'd heard live birds was on Treya; the second time, on Chandaka.

  Then this must be the planet Oculus, at Colossus. She opened her eyes.

  A billowing canopy of pale blue silk hung over her bed, extravagant as something from history. The bed was a four-poster, strictly for use under gravity. Her head was embraced by a luxuriously soft pillow.

  She stretched and yawned. Other than the birds, there was no sound; no fans, or pumps, or footsteps overhead. No wonder she had slept so well, despite the heat in this room.