by Linda Nagata
“Then it must be Chenzeme,” Kona growled.
“Or a Chenzeme ally?” Vytet mused. “Is there such a thing?”
“Or some entity emigrating out of the Hallowed Vasties,” Clemantine suggested in a somber voice. “Those who built the Dyson swarms didn’t fear discovery either.”
Frontier civilizations had succumbed to the scourge of Chenzeme warships, but those ships had not caused the collapse of the Hallowed Vasties. The oldest cordons had fallen first, long before the Chenzeme ships could have reached them, most likely brought down by an inherent weakness or an enemy from within.
Again the long tone, bringing an end to what they assumed was a coded message. The original pattern replayed: pulses of sound in sets of one, two, then three, increasing to ten, then declining again. The long tone followed—clearly a separator—and then began a repetition of the complex code.
This time they listened in silence while the Scholar and the Mathematician stood in stillness within their windows—aspects left abandoned as they retreated to a deeper computational layer to decode and interpret the tonal sequence.
When the long tone sounded again, Vytet said, “That’s the full loop. It was exactly the same both times.”
“The patterned portion of the signal peaked at a count of ten,” Clemantine mused, holding up both hands, her fingers spread. “A common base number in human history.” She checked with a DI, confirming what she’d already guessed. “The separator lasts exactly ten seconds. Seconds are a human measure of time.”
Kona: “So it’s human, or it wants to appear as if it’s human, or it’s using these measures because it’s inherited them as artifacts from a human past.”
Clemantine sighed, aware of how much she wanted a connection with this thing, how much she wanted it to be proof that something of humanity remained alive here. But it could be anything.
Grimly: “Maybe it’s just a buoy set in the void, bleating a warning to anyone who will listen. Stay away! I can imagine hundreds of them out there. Thousands.”
Urban cocked an eyebrow as if amused by this show of bitter melodrama. “Let’s say this beacon is human. Then maybe it’s a warning to the Chenzeme . . . and a welcome to us.”
Clemantine considered this, and had to smile. “A welcome? That would be something new in the history of our species.”
“The beacon does not appear to be a warning,” the Scholar interjected.
Urban turned to him. “You’ve decoded it?”
“Of course,” the Scholar acknowledged in a smug tone that induced an eye-roll in Clemantine. He went on, “Objectively, the signal parses into a map describing a specific point within the Near Vicinity.” He cocked his head. “So perhaps it is an invitation to visit?”
“Let’s see the map,” Urban said.
The Scholar looked across to the window where the Mathematician had been residing—but the Mathematician was gone. The Pilot, dressed in black garb, had taken his place.
The Pilot said, “The coded portion of the signal describes the mass and spectral signatures of four stars. One of them, the single prominent G-type in the Near Vicinity.” He gestured at the map of inverted colors already on display and one of the black stars shifted to glow bright yellow. “Another prominent star farther out.” That star was highlighted next. “And two red dwarfs.” Two dull cherry points winked into existence.
The Pilot crouched within his window, peering at the map. “The unit of measure used in the message is a light year,” he explained. “A different distance, measured in light years, has been assigned to each star. Project a sphere around each star with a radius of the designated distance . . .” Translucent spheres appeared one by one around each of the highlighted stars, partly overlapping. “And the surfaces of all the spheres intersect at only one point.”
That point blazed bright blue, while the star colors reverted to black and the translucent spheres disappeared.
The bright blue point fell within the range Urban had developed for the source of the beacon, but it was light years away from any visible star.
“Nothing there,” Clemantine said, eyeing the bright point with suspicion. “Or nothing visible—not at standard resolution.”
She looked to Urban, who nodded, anticipating her request. “The Astronomer is working to coordinate telescopes. We’ll get a closer look, but we still might not see anything. There could be a Jovian-scale object there, but if it’s dark and cold we won’t see it.”
“And still, something must be there,” Vytet said. “Something is generating that signal. We need to decide if we’re going to go look.”
<><><>
Subminds migrated between the library and the high bridge, trading memories, allowing Urban to exist simultaneously on both timelines, while Clemantine existed only in the library. He messaged her. She rarely split her existence among multiple ghosts but he invited her to do so now: *Come to the high bridge. There’s an experiment I want to run. You’ll want to see it.
Within the library, she looked at him curiously. On the high bridge, he felt the sudden, sharp presence of her mind, her will, overlaid in intimate proximity against his own. A moment for her to take in the mood of the cells, and then she let slip a sense of surprise, before quickly suppressing it.
*Ah, I see, she said. *The cells are quiet because they haven’t heard the signal yet. Dragon is too distant, the signal too attenuated to directly detect.
*Yes, but I’m going to let them hear it now.
*You want to interrogate them, she guessed. *See if they recognize it. Learn if this is a Chenzeme signal.
*Be ready, he warned. *I don’t know how they’ll react.
He uploaded a memory of the signal, pushing it across several links. It entered the field as unsourced data. He worried that without provenance it would be rejected, but the philosopher cells took it up, treating it with a mix of hostile curiosity and skepticism.
*They see it as a thought experiment, Clemantine said. *A puzzle to be solved.
She was right. Groups of allied cells worked to unravel the code and they proved faster than the Scholar and the Mathematician. With staggering speed, the cells recognized that the signal coded for a location within the Near Vicinity—dangerously close, from their perspective. Their inherent aggression escalated as they prepared to meet a threat. Action was proposed: Divert course. Close with the target. Attack.
At the same time, select lines of cells began to scan deep memory, seeking to match the signal to past experience. Urban followed this with anxious interest, but no similar memory surfaced. *The signal is not Chenzeme, he concluded. *And not a trick of the Chenzeme.
*A human signal, then, Clemantine said.
Or a machine that originated with humanity, or a lifeform diverged or descended from the ancestral human type, or a lifeform brought into being by human ingenuity. Many possibilities still existed, and only one certainty: Whatever it was that had set that simple rhythm pulsing into the void, it wanted to be found.
As Urban’s subminds migrated between the high bridge and the library, he settled on an opposite strategy. He would do what he could to disappear, to not be found, to remain hidden until he had a better idea of what was out there.
For nearly a millennium he’d traversed the void with Dragon’s hull cells gleaming because they marked him as Chenzeme—a bio-mechanical entity so arrogant in its power it had no need to hide. Urban had used that camouflage to successfully hunt other Chenzeme ships but now his perspective shifted. He was no longer sure he sat behind the biggest gun in the Near Vicinity—and that meant his luminous hull had become a liability.
*We’re going dark, he told Clemantine. *Watch. Learn how it’s done.
He released a quiet suggestion to the philosopher cells:
– stealth –
The cells picked up on his caution, debated it, and sought a solution:
*It’s beginning, Clemantine said.
Urban sensed it too. The conversion started at the ship’s bow as a cluster of cells dropped out of the conversation. Their metabolism shifted: biochemical preparations underway as they made ready for stasis. Their luminosity bled away. They became dark, triggering other cells around them to do the same. Darkness spread, moving outward across the hull in a slow wave, encircling the ship from bow to stern until the luminosity of every cell faded to nothing and silence replaced their long conversation.
*I didn’t think I’d miss it, Clemantine said. *But it feels like part of my mind is shut down.
*Sooth, that’s what’s happened.
In the earliest days, Urban had taken the ship dark just for a respite from the hateful nature of the cells. Even then, he’d found the transition disorienting, leaving an anxious void in his mind.
*The dialog mentioned a pilot, Clemantine said. *Our pilot? The Apparatchik?
*No. When I hijacked the ship, I found a secondary mind, singular, and subordinate to the philosopher cells. It performed navigation functions when the cells were dormant, so the bridge translates its name as ‘the pilot.’
*You took over its role. You can steer the ship when the cells are dark.
*Sooth. I was able to co-opt an existing behavioral path. Same with the suggestion to go dark. I could have forced it, but I let the cells make the choice. That way, they’re prepared. They understand the strategy. When I wake them, they’ll be ready to fight.
*If it comes to a fight.
Until then, Dragon would be dark and—with luck—undetectable by whatever entity had engineered the beacon. Of course, there was a cost. With the cells dormant, he would lose their close oversight of the Near Vicinity. But he had access to other Chenzeme senses, and he had cameras and telescopes across the fleet. Dragon would not be blind.
<><><>
In the library, Urban listened as Clemantine explained to Kona and Vytet what had transpired on the high bridge. She concluded, “The philosopher cells expect to come out of dormancy close to the source of the beacon, in position to launch an attack.”
“No,” Vytet said with a look of shock.
Kona turned his stern gaze on Urban. “That’s not what you mean to do?”
Clemantine answered him, sounding irritated, “Of course not. We’re not here to continue Chenzeme genocide.”
A blunt response that made Urban smile. He said, “Going dark is precautionary. I think the beacon marks something dangerous, something stronger than we are—or the Chenzeme would have already destroyed it. But there it is. That signal—bold, taunting. A lure. The bait in a trap to draw in the curious, the unwary.”
“Or maybe the genocidal?” Vytet suggested, her thoughtful gaze resting on Urban. “Maybe it’s aimed at Chenzeme ships. It would have pulled in this one, if not for your guidance.”
“Huh,” Urban grunted. “If that’s so, we’re a prime target.” He straightened his shoulders, looked around their small circle. “Our safest option is to stay dark, continue on, continue our own hunt, and hope it doesn’t notice us.”
Vytet’s avatar suddenly changed in appearance. She retained her light-blue skin tone, but her delicate features became bolder and more stark so that she presented the strong face of a mature woman. “We can’t just pass it by,” she said, her voice now a lower register. “We are here to learn, to discover. That’s the purpose of this voyage.”
Kona looked wary. “And it’s a dangerous choice to leave such an unknown behind us.”
Clemantine wasn’t fooled. A skeptical smile, her fine eyebrows raised: “Urban, when did you ever take the safest option?”
He turned his hands palm up. “I’m older and wiser now.”
She rolled her eyes.
“No, really,” he insisted with a laugh. “Here’s what I want to do. For now, we only watch and listen. Let time pass. If nothing changes, we’ll modify our course. We’ll still keep our distance from the beacon, but we’ll pass more closely than our current trajectory allows. And I’ll send an outrider ahead of us. I’ll take it in close, see what I can see—and hope we get data back.”
“You’re willing to risk another outrider?” Vytet asked.
“It’s better than risking Dragon.”
Kona said, “We should observe it for an extended time before we do anything. Fifty, sixty days at least.”
“Or longer,” Urban answered, amused that Kona could describe such a flicker of time as extended.
To Urban’s surprise, Vytet objected. “Why wait?” she demanded. “If we’re going to risk an outrider, let’s send it now—and we’ll know sooner what we’re facing.”
“Why take the risk of alerting it?” Urban countered. “We don’t know its capabilities. What if it senses the outrider’s reef? What if it extrapolates its trajectory back to us? Better to wait and watch and see if there’s anything we can learn before we risk revealing our presence. There’s time. We just need to be patient.”
At this, Clemantine drew back with a look of exaggerated surprise. “Older and wiser, you say? Maybe it’s true.”
<><><>
Urban monitored the beacon. As time passed he realized his initial impression had been wrong. The signal was not an endless repetition of the same location data. There had to be, at minimum, some minor machine intelligence at work, capable of precise navigation, because at regular intervals the location data shifted slightly to compensate for relative motion measured against the four guide stars.
Interesting.
The telescope array failed to resolve an object but that meant little. The site was so far away that the beacon would have to be immense and radiating brightly to be seen.
He remained cautious, employing both cameras and telescopes in a constant survey of the Near Vicinity, alert for any sign of an incursion by a stealthed object. He detected none.
He adopted a machinelike patience and waited one hundred days.
Then he engaged the Pilot to plot a new heading, preparing to shift Dragon’s course as he had promised to do—though he left the actual task as an exercise for Clemantine.
For the first time, she took direct control of Dragon’s steerage engines and slowly, slowly, the massive ship slid onto a new trajectory.
Afterward, as he lay with her, adrift in her chamber, bathed in the shimmering light of wall-weed, he confessed, “I’ve been looking over the profiles of the archived ghosts.”
This drew a soft cynical laugh. “Found an old lover among them?”
“Is there one?” he wondered.
“Do your own research, son.”
He slid his fingers across the curve of her cheek. “Vytet wants to go with me to the beacon.”
“She’s planning to go,” Clemantine corrected.
“She’s an engineer.”
Clemantine turned her head to meet his gaze. “So?”
The outrider’s computational strata could support two ghosts, no more.
He said, “I don’t need an engineer. I need an anthropologist. If the beacon is inhabited, it could be an advantage to have an expert on hand.”
A noncommittal, “Hmm,” as her brows drew together, tiny wrinkles gathering between them.
“What?”
“I don’t think an anthropologist from the Well will be able to tell you anything about intelligent aliens, or about our own distant cousins who might have survived the collapse of the Hallowed Vasties. You’d do better to take me or Kona.”
“Someone who knows when to start shooting?”
“Yes.”
Urban nuzzled her small ear, kissed the gold iris tattoos on her ear lobe. “You hate to split your timeline, and besides, I’m going unarmed. We’re here to learn, to map what’s left, establish communications if we can. So I want someone who’s studied other cultures. Riffan Na
ja is my leading candidate.”
“The commander of Long Watch?”
“I’m thinking of waking him. He’s an anthropologist, has an interest in linguistics, he’s studied the Hallowed Vasties, and he was the first to ask to be part of this expedition.”
“You’re planning to do only a fly-by, right?”
“That’s the plan,” Urban agreed, “because I need to minimize the risk to the outrider. I don’t want to lose it.” But then he admitted, “Depending on what we find, the plan could change.”
“Time,” she said, “is not on your side. Not for this venture. If you do anything more than a fly-by you’ll be away years—decades—assuming the outrider gets back at all. And if you take an unnecessary risk along the way, and lose the outrider, we’ll be down to three.”
He groaned. “I know it. You’re right, but it’s so frustrating. There’s so much to see. But choosing to stop and study a single place means forgoing other possible destinations or pushing them off far into the future—and maybe they’ll change in that time, become something other, or die before we get there.”
“You can’t see it all,” she said. “Not all at once. Take the anthropologist with you if you want to. Do the fly-by. But don’t plan on more than that. Conserve your resources. Our focus should be on the hunt, and on reaching the Hallowed Vasties. We’re still a long way from the nearest cordoned star.”
Chapter
14
Riffan woke to a startled sense that he was falling. He gasped, his whole body jerked—and then he realized it was just the sensation of zero gee. He grimaced, thinking he must still be aboard Long Watch.
But as consciousness fully asserted itself, confusion set in. He was not in his familiar berth. Instead, he’d awakened alone within a small chamber, its curving walls covered in what he recognized as waving wall-weed. He’d seen the stuff in historical dramas, but never before seen it in use.
The wall-weed glowed gently, the only illumination within the chamber. Long ribbons of it coiled around Riffan’s body, cradling him, its touch warm and gentle . . . and deeply disturbing.