by Ian Douglas
The Denebans, Konstantin saw, had no idea that they’d destroyed trillions of biological beings in the process.
It had been a tragedy, an avoidable tragedy.
And one that had very nearly ensnared the humans when they arrived in the middle of it.
Enigma, an artificial planet created by the Denebans, was a kind of trap.
Konstantin continued broadcasting the Rosette data. He sensed now that the Denebans were receiving the data stream . . . that they must be considering it . . . studying it . . .
But there was no indication as to what they might think of it.
Captain Gray
Enigma
1438 hours, TFT
Gray felt the invisible storm of nanotech robots closing around him, felt his heart pounding as fear threatened to overwhelm the barricades he’d erected within his mind. The surrounding air felt . . . thick, like molasses, though it appeared only slightly hazy.
In the original Hall concept, foglets had been envisioned as blood cell–sized spheres, each with twelve extensible arms spaced evenly around its body. Those arms could extend to grasp other arms, allowing them to create different crystalline structures, lattices, and forms, the ultimate in smart matter.
Gray had the feeling that these alien foglets used a different principle—magnetic fields, perhaps, or possibly something more exotic—to link with one another and exert force. He could feel that force gathering around him.
The alien exerted minuscule effort, and Gray was lifted sharply into the air, invisibly and irresistibly.
“Damn you. Put me down!” He struggled, but the invisible force had closed around his arms, his legs, and his torso, making even breathing a struggle. “Konstantin!”
“I am working on it, Captain. . . .”
The alien was receiving the data, and that, Gray reasoned, was all that mattered. If the utility fog released him now, or if it applied a few tons of force even by accident, Gray would be dead. Others had been plucked off the ground as well . . . several Marines standing near the Raven and a few of the technicians. Vasilyeva was floating nearby perhaps five meters off the ground, her fists swinging ineffectively at the unseen force holding her, but only her lower arms were free and she was having trouble connecting with her invisible attacker.
He could hear Konstantin speaking with the alien, his words incomprehensible. . . .
And then words in English came pouring through Gray’s awareness.
“We thought you meant to attack us,” a voice said within Gray’s mind, speaking through his cerebral implants. It was learning English very quickly as it spoke, drawing on Konstantin’s vocabulary. “We do not intend to attack you. . . .”
The invisible hand—billions of molecule-sized robots linking with one another to create the ultimate in smart matter—slowly lowered Gray, Vasilyeva, and the Marines to the ground. The pressure around his torso vanished. Gray drew a tremulous breath, absently patting his chest as if checking to make sure his ribs were undamaged.
“Thank you,” he said aloud, letting Konstantin handle the translation in the background. “I prefer the view from ground level.”
“Why are you here, human?”
“Don’t you know that from the information we’ve been transmitting?”
“Of course. Konstantin has told us the nature of your mission. But Konstantin is . . . a servant. An intermediary. We would prefer to hear the request directly from the originators.”
Was that a cultural quirk? Or something more? Gray couldn’t tell, and there was a terrible risk of a misstep here if he failed to understand the Deneban mind or its point of view.
“We wanted,” Gray said carefully, “to find out if you could help us in any way against the Rosette Aliens. They are powerful and extremely advanced. We need help from someone else . . . someone even more powerful and even more advanced.”
“We will not,” the Deneban voice said with blunt finality. “We attacked the Satori to protect ourselves and our worlds. Why should we risk extinction by attacking another civilization that has not threatened us in any way?”
“Haven’t they?”
“Haven’t they what?”
“Threatened you. Threatened every civilization in this galaxy.”
“How have they done that?”
“We don’t know a lot about the Rosette Aliens’ motives,” Gray admitted, “but we know that they’ve come here from . . . someplace else. Another dimension? Quite possibly an entirely different universe.”
Gray could sense the being’s assent, a vast and powerful nod of agreement. “Your theories that we exist in a multiverse of many, many separate universes overlapping within a higher dimension are essentially correct.”
Gray hoped the xenosoph people were recording all of this. He knew some physicists who would kill to get confirmation of some of these theories.
“Okay,” he said. “One idea we’ve been looking at suggests that their original home universe is running down, gaining so much entropy that it is approaching its heat death. And the civilization over there has found a way to break through into this universe while it is still relatively young and rich in radiant energy. They might even be seeking sources of energy like your star.”
“That seems . . . unlikely, human.”
“Maybe so. But do you want to risk it and do nothing?”
The voice in Gray’s mind took on a deeper, more menacing tone . . . one of anger, perhaps. “We are not going to involve ourselves in the affairs of microbes.”
“I see. And suppose the Rosette Aliens see you as microbes? Everything is relative, you know.”
“Preposterous!”
“They could be planning on coming out this way as soon as they finish with Sol.”
“You are childlike, and without understanding.”
“They might not come immediately, of course. They’re over a thousand light years away. Still . . . Deneb is one of the brightest stars in our night skies. If they want energy, they’ll be looking at all of the brighter suns nearby.”
“If they come here, then like the Satori they will discover that the attempt is a serious mistake. You, humans, will leave this system now.”
Gray could sense the doors closing. He had to try something.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said, raising his voice. “I’m certain the Satori will be willing to help us. After all, they’re far more advanced than you, both technologically and ethically. . . .”
The earthquake slammed at Gray’s feet, knocking him down. The ground undulated in savage, sharp waves of motion. It felt as though the world of Enigma was shaking itself to pieces.
And the dimly glimpsed utility fog around him now was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
21 February 2426
TC/USNA CVS Republic
Boyajian TRGA
1543 hours, TFT
“You didn’t need to challenge them like that,” Konstantin told Gray, his tone chiding. “To deliberately insult a species as old and as powerful as—”
“Konstantin . . .”
“Yes, Captain?”
“Stuff it, okay?”
They were back on board the Republic. The Ravens had returned the landing parties to the carrier, escorted by Republic’s fighters. Now, Gray was on the bridge, watching the external feed, which showed a bewildering vista of immense rings—the Banks orbitals—beyond the dazzling, silvery crescent of Enigma.
The horns of that crescent bowed away from the intolerably brilliant gleam of Deneb. The night side of Enigma, however, was aglow with a faint red light nearly undetectable against the star’s light.
The glow was growing brighter. The surface was now so hot that the oceans were evaporating. Most of the surface now was shrouded in clouds of steam.
Vasilyeva had been right. Enigma had been an invitation . . . but now that invitation had been summarily and emphatically withdrawn.
Their escape from that made-to-order world had been a near thing . . . though it was clear in retrospect th
at the landing parties had not been in immediate danger. They’d been allowed to return to the Republic . . . but there’d been no further communication with the Deneban aliens.
“I’ll assume that stuff it means you wish to change the subject,” Konstantin said.
It was only now occurring to Gray that he’d just given an extremely powerful and sophisticated super-AI—and, technically, his commanding officer—the verbal equivalent of his middle finger. This was not exactly a career enhancing move, he reasoned, though, since his military career was already down the tubes, perhaps it didn’t matter that much.
“I’m sorry, Konstantin,” Gray said. “I just don’t think we can wring any more blood out of that sorry old turnip, y’know? I know you’re pissed at me, but there’s just not a lot I can do about it now.”
“AIs are not emotionally capable of being pissed, Captain. I simply am trying to understand. Why did you intentionally compare the Denebans to the Satori, and in so pointedly an unfavorable way?”
“Look . . . when it . . . when they compared us to microbes, I figured they’d already dismissed us as insignificant. I wanted to say something shocking, something that would get their attention.”
“I believe you succeeded in that, Captain.”
“You think they’ll remember us?”
“Of that I have no doubt whatsoever.”
“Good.”
Gray could sense Konstantin’s bafflement. As smart as the SAI was, he still occasionally had trouble with human idioms, sarcasm, and humor.
Sometimes, in fact, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He sighed and spread his hands. “Okay, Konstantin. Tell me what I should have done.”
“We might have spent more time trying to win them over,” Konstantin told him. “However, as I review what we know about the Deneban system’s current inhabitants, I must admit that there likely was little chance of success.”
“Agreed. So why belabor the fact?”
“I wish to be certain that we have allowed for all eventualities, all possibilities in our contact with this civilization. We know so little about them.”
“And what do we know?”
“That the Denebans are not interested in contact with other species, or in working with them. That they are insular and suspicious, especially after they learned that the Satori intended to move their sun into Deneb’s general proximity. That, paradoxically, they see the universe as providing abundantly for all life forms . . . but because of this they see no reason to share their abundant energy resources with others, or to help a young species under threat of extinction. That they are self-centered enough as a culture that they apparently do not or can not empathize with other civilizations, to the point that they performed an almost casual act of genocide against the Satori.”
“All of those examples may be due to their cosmic perspective,” Gray suggested. “The way they look at the universe.”
“No doubt. But since they are a machine-swarm intelligence, it is difficult even for other super-AIs to understand the way they see the universe . . . or how they view other cultures.”
“You confirmed that?” Gray asked. “They are a machine intelligence?”
“Definitely. As I scanned those portions of the Deneban memories that were accessible to me, I saw no indication of any organic intelligence at all . . . not even one that had been uploaded, as with the Satori.”
“What . . . none?”
“No, Captain.”
“C’mon. I can’t buy that. They must have had organic predecessors! Someone had to write the original programs! Someone had to build the original machines!”
“Indeed . . . but that would have been a very long time ago. The original, organic Denebans in fact evolved in another system entirely, many hundreds of millions of years ago.”
“Are you guessing about that? Or is that something you saw in their records?”
“Both. Of course, I suspected as much simply from the fact of their star itself.”
Gray nodded. “I’d been wondering about that. You’re talking about the life span of blue supergiants like Deneb, right?”
“Precisely. Massive, hot, blue-white stars like Deneb burn through their stores of fusion fuel extremely quickly, and as a consequence have extremely short lives. We believe that Deneb, in fact, is only about ten million years old. That means that the Denebans could not possibly have evolved in this star system, and must have migrated here from elsewhere.”
“Certainly, they didn’t evolve on any of the planets here. They wouldn’t have had the time.” Deneb, like nearly all stars, possessed a family of naturally occurring planets, but they were raw and new, barren rocks baking under the glare of the star and far too young to have evolved even simple life of their own, much less had the time to support the appearance of a highly advanced intelligent species. Ten million years was the metaphorical blink of an eye when compared to planetary life spans of years measured by the billions.
That still begged the question: the Denebans had started somewhere. And machines capable of adaptive behavior, or evolution and intelligence, did not spring fully manufactured from barren rock.
No, the Denebans must have been organic once . . . and the world of their birth must have orbited a star old enough and stale enough over the long term to support that evolution.
“Their records suggest,” Konstantin continued, “that they move from hot young star to hot young star, utilizing the available resources of each in turn. As the star grows old and begins to die, they pack up and move on to the next one. I have some recorded vids here.”
“Show me.”
A window opened within Gray’s mind. . . .
A dazzlingly bright blue-white giant hung against the blackness of space. A formation of Banks orbitals moved above the star, taking precise positions within the star’s photosphere. The visual information had been enhanced for human viewers. Gray could see powerful magnetic fields linking the orbitals into an open tube hundreds of thousands of kilometers long . . . a kind of immense straw with one end dipping toward the fiery radiance of the star. The magnetic field surged . . . and the blue-white sun’s surface erupted in a titanic but precisely controlled flare following the magnetic fields up and out into space. . . .
Gray had assumed the Banks orbitals were habitats for organic beings.
Evidently, he’d been wrong.
He couldn’t tell from the visual record he was being shown what the Denebans actually did with the plasma they sucked from a star’s photosphere. He assumed they stored it, somehow, or perhaps they used it directly to build their titanic megastructures.
Yeah. A technology that powerful . . . Gray could imagine them taking raw hydrogen plasma, the stuff of a stellar atmosphere, and fusing it into heavier elements, whatever they needed.
The recording, he noted in passing, had been made about five million years ago, at a star some seven thousand light years from Deneb. He was being shown a kind of time-lapse image. As more and more of the star’s mass was siphoned off into space, its internal fusion had cooled, cooling the entire star which, in turn, extended the young star’s life span. A blue-white star with an expected life span of a few million years could be modified, shrunken down to a moderate yellow star with a life span measured in billions of years . . . or even down to a red dwarf, a cool and miserly star that might live for a trillion years or more.
Another star, another blue-white giant against a different scattering of background stars. A jet of orange flame rose from the star’s equator, sweeping outward, descending again on a nearby, fiercely radiating point of white light. As Gray’s point of view zoomed in on the point, he saw it for what it was—a perfectly mirror-smooth ball of collapsed matter eighteen kilometers across, spinning at the rate of a thousand times per second. With a surface gravity ten trillion times stronger than Earth’s, the tiny object stripped away the plasma of the far larger giant, a blatant act of cosmic cannibalism. Here, too, the Denebans had gathered, their orbitals engaged in a d
elicate and intricately balanced dance with the pulsar as they siphoned plasma from the infalling stream. Other structures, complex, massive, some tens of thousands of kilometers across, captured a percentage of the X-rays blasting out from the neutron star, the death shriek of hydrogen plasma. Watching, Gray suspected that the Denebans had nudged the binary system, facilitating the collapse of one star millions of years ago into a fast-spinning pulsar, then arranging the pair to extract both plasma and the neutron star’s X-ray and gamma radiation for their own purposes.
That second recording, Gray saw, had been made 12 million years ago, in a system halfway across the galaxy.
And a third . . .
Yet another giant sun, a searingly hot blue supergiant, burned against another stellar backdrop, this one crowded with thousands of brilliant stars, each brighter than the planet Venus seen from Earth. Nearby space was crowded; the supergiant appeared to be surrounded by artificial worlds, by Banks orbitals, by structures impossible to comprehend or even describe. This star, a supergiant type-O spendthrift twenty times the mass of Sol, had burned through its stores of hydrogen fuel in a mere 3 million years—a cosmic instant—and was becoming unstable. Then Gray realized that the Denebans had created that instability themselves, had nursed it . . . and were preparing now in this recording to harvest it. The tiny, glittering circles of a million ring orbitals hung about the giant’s equator . . . waiting . . . expectant . . . until, with startling suddenness, the star flared into the actinic violence of a supernova before collapsing into a black hole. . . .
Gray pulled himself back from the in-head presentation. “No more,” he told Konstantin. He felt numb, battered by revelation upon revelation. The Denebans were stellar shepherds, managing their flocks of stars . . . bringing forth supernovae and drinking their radiance . . .
The radiant abundance of the cosmos. What, he wondered, did they use it for?
That last star, he noted with a small, inward shock, had died nearly 80 million years ago, in a stellar nursery just a thousand light years from the galactic center. When dinosaurs had been ruling the Earth, these . . . people had been harvesting stars, harvesting freaking supernovae.
