The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  He gave no opening for it. “No argument. Besides, you’ve paid your poll tax. You’ve earned some peace and quiet and spoiling the kids rotten when you see them.” When Lars Rydberg brought them, his youngest descendants, from Earth for a visit.

  “I’ve tried. Everybody keeps … asking my advice, and then—”

  “Uh-huh. One thing leads to another. They’ll never stop while you’re there for them.”

  “But I’m less and less able.” She hugged herself against the chill and the trembling. “I’m afraid, hideously afraid I’ve … outlived whatever usefulness I had … and soon I’ll make some blunder that kills people.”

  “I don’t expect you will right away. As for afterward, you don’t have to, ever. You can keep on helping, really helping, tirelessly, for as long as need be.”

  She looked up at the ghost-face and said into its hard gentleness: “I guessed what you had in mind when you called to ask if you could come around.”

  The head nodded. “You download your mentality.”

  She stared past him, at Edmond’s quiescent picture, and was mute.

  “Then you, this you, will be free,” he said.

  Throughout her life, when she came to a crux of things, thought had gone clear and heartbeat steady. It was not that she had an answer yet, it was that she had the questions.

  “But the other me,” she demurred.

  For a second or two she dared not glance back at him. She reminded herself that what she would see was no vulnerable mortal countenance, it was a mask that he shaped and reshaped as he calculated was fitting. Regardless, how alive it seemed when she met those eyes again, how drolly understanding.

  “I know,” he replied to her. “You were always too kind to come flat out and say it in front of me, but I knew. How can I endure being a machine? The notion of becoming one too freezes you.”

  She lifted a hand to deny but let it sink. What he offered her was forthrightness. For his honor and hers, she must accept. “I’ve been amazed, whenever I thought about it. Other downloads—” Of the few that had been made, how many remained besides him? Two, three, four? She tried and failed to remember any that had requested termination because they were miserable. No, hadn’t they, in their different ways, just said that they did not care to go on?

  Guthrie smiled. “Me, I still find the universe interesting. You might very well also.”

  “I wonder. I doubt.” Would she not in phantom fashion yearn for the flesh, little though she had left of it or of time? Was that emptiness not what the downloads wished escape from? Not that they grieved for what they had lost. What had they to grieve with? (Or did they, somehow? None had ever quite been able to explain, if it had tried at all.) But neither did they fear oblivion.

  She gathered resolution. “Would I make a, an effective machine?” That was one solid reason some of them had giving for ending it, that they weren’t suited for this, they weren’t working right.

  “You would,” Guthrie said, “whether you liked the condition or not. I know you.”

  “Do you like it?” she forced out.

  “Alive was better,” he admitted bluntly. “But I find my fun anyhow. And you’re of my blood, Diddyboom.”

  His blood, decades ash strewn over those Lunar mountains where the ash of his Juliana had waited for him. But also alive in her, Lars, her sons and daughters with ’Mond, and theirs and theirs, maybe for millions of years to come, maybe to outlive the stars. If it got the chance.

  She spoke carefully, to give him truth but no impression of self-pity. “I don’t suppose I’d want to continue indefinitely like you. I’m tired, Uncans. Not unhappy, on the contrary, but when the time comes for dying, I’ll be ready.” To follow ’Mond.

  Again he nodded. “Old and full of days. And those days were mighty full themselves.” Of achievement, said his tone, and love, mirth, adventure, passion; even the pain and sorrow v/ere aliveness. “But Dagny, if you knew your work would not be for nothing but would go on, you—mortal you—could enjoy this last short while you’ve got, and lay you down with a will.”

  “Yes. But my download.”

  “She won’t be you.”

  “I’ll be responsible for her existing.”

  “She won’t curse you for it. I know you well enough to know that, sweetheart.” And how did it feel to him, she wondered, to watch his Diddyboom age and die while he abided changeless? “Think about it.” Think fast, think hard and straight.

  “I have,” she told him. “This isn’t a complete surprise to me. I do expect that other mind would carry on till the Moon is free—whatever that’s going to mean—and reasonably safe. But then—”

  “If then she wants to stop,” Guthrie said, “she shall. I promise.”

  35

  As it did every year, the system reminded Venator that this was his mother’s birthday. He called her when the sun stood at midmorning above her home. They chatted a while in the mix of Anglo and Bantu that had been a private dialect when he was a child. Neither of them found much to say.

  “It would be nice if you could come in person sometime,” she finished wistfully. “I can’t hug your image. And I would like to show you how well the roses are doing. Not a picture. We would walk around and touch and smell them.”

  Her own image was amply real in the big eido-phone, gray hair, lined face, gown full and plain as befitted a Cosmological Christian but a floral brooch at the throat. Behind her chair, the door stood open on mild weather and brilliant light. He had a partial view of stoep and yard and the Kwathlamba foothills, winter-tawny, spotted with groves, a herd of antelope in the distance. Her harp thrushes were trilling in the garden loudly enough for him to hear.

  “I am busy, Mamlet,” he said. “Extraordinarily busy. I visit whenever I can.” And when was that last? He couldn’t quite recall. Well, he’d make a point of it soon. No need to feel self-sacrificing, either. Once this Proserpina business was under control, some rest and gentleness would be very welcome.

  “Yes. Take care of yourself,” she urged anxiously. “Your work is too hard, too strange. Your father—” She stopped. It was not a subject to pursue. Although he had never reproached his only child, Ministrator Joseph Mthembu died knowing the boy was apostate and thinking he had become half machine.

  The father’s religion professed to include the findings of science. Why did he not understand that what was happening was not the negation of humanness but its fulfillment? Even if the Teramind and the Noösphere were too alien for him, wherever he went on Earth he saw people free of want, sickness, fear, mind-numbing toil of body or brain, free to live as they chose.

  “Don’t worry,” Venator said. “Please don’t. My work is my joy, and I have you and Dada to thank for it.” That they gave him to the cybercosm. He smiled. “Besides, I get plenty of healthy recreation.” He was out upon the mountains as often as the hunt allowed on which he was engaged.

  She brightened. “Does that include a young lady?”

  “Well, … no. Not yet.” Not ever, he supposed, in the sense she meant. No grandchild for her. The species was still too numerous for its sanity. Always the elect must set the example; when they failed, they ceased to be the elect, and presently history cast them out. Always they had failed, until the cybercosm came into incorruptible being and guided them.

  How he wished he could bring this sad little woman to see that DNA no longer counted. It had been evolution’s means toward an end. Henceforward the true inheritance was of the spirit.

  The thoughts, the unspoken responses, did not cross his awareness. They were in the background, a part of him. He smiled again. “Plenty of time later,” he reassured her. “But first, some of my Mamlet’s hand-cooked food, eh? In a month or two, I hope.”

  Offside, an urgency signal flashed. His blood roused. “Now I truly am busy,” he said fast. “Have a wonderful day. You will be with friends, I trust. Give them my kindest regards.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. He doubted she would. A synnoiont
was not a mere successful son to be proud of. It was as if she shrank before his eyes. “Thank you for calling. Goodbye.”

  He blanked the screen. “What’s the message?” he snapped.

  “Lilisaire of Zamok Vysoki asks for contact with you, specifically, by the name Venator and rank Pragmatic,” the speaker replied.

  The assessment raced through him: The Lunarian didn’t know where he was. Hardly a human in the universe did. But she expected the system would relay to him. Therefore she had discovered his standing within it and his leadership against her—with high probability, at least. That was no surprise to him, after his recent experiences. But should he take this call, and thus confirm her deduction for her? Yes. It was a nearly trivial payout of information, for a chance to gain more, perhaps much more. What else did she know, and what did she mean to do with the knowledge? “Accept,” he said, the headiness of the chase upon him.

  Her image appeared, standing in a room as black as polished obsidian, clad in a form-fitting floor-length gown of sulfur-colored fur texture. The auburn mane fell unbound past features that might have been carved in bone, a mask, but the eyes were like great luminous emeralds. Draped around her bare shoulders lay a metamorphic snake, its scales shattering light into sparks of rainbow. Suddenly and violently, he wanted her.

  Stop that. “Hail, my lady,” he said in her language, before remembering that with him she preferred for some reason to use Anglo. He changed to it: “How may I serve you?”

  The image was not static while photons went to and fro. She breathed. She moved, shifting the balance of her body well-nigh too subtly to see, but not to sense in his own.

  The voice sang cold: “Agents of your corps have invaded a home on Earth, to disrupt its peaceful doings and seize valuable property therein. I would know by what license they acted. Else shall I complain to the Justiciar of the High Council, and to the Solar System at large.”

  So she was taking the offensive. Counterstrike. “I do not think you will, my lady.”

  She meant the stationary sophotect that bore the name Mary Carfax, Venator knew. Either it had phoned an alarm to somebody in her service when the men entered, or an automatic signal had gone out. Investigation had not yet shown which, and it doubtless made no difference. What mattered was the speed with which Lilisaire had learned, and reacted.

  Regardless, beneath the hard surface she must be shaken. Keep her that way.

  “If the action had a warrant, the issuance and the cause should be in the public database,” she said. “Naught have I found.”

  “The matter concerns official secrets, my lady,” Venator riposted. “Under the Covenant, information may be withheld during a major emergency, until it has been resolved. In frankness, may I say that, under the circumstances, this is to your benefit?”

  Transmission lag. He did not look away from her—bad psychological tactics—but he tried not to remember her naked.

  “You speak as though opposition were crime.” Was she temporizing while she planned the next move?

  “Not at all, my lady,” he said. “You have every right to your politics and free expression.” He forged sternness. “But you have no right to confidential data, or to attempt ferreting them out. You absolutely may not restrict the free expression and self-development of a sentience. That amounts to enslavement, my lady, the ultimate violation of rights.”

  A pair of seconds passed.

  Lilisaire smiled. It was almost a friendly smile, and her tone almost conversational. “We need not padfoot about the subject, you and I, need we? It is the machine in San Francisco. Indeed it has been of help to me from time to time, a consultant, as belike it has aided others. Broken in upon, it loyally informed an agent of mine on Earth. I naturally waxed indignant, and demand you exonerate your corps, if you are able.”

  “You spoke of property seized, my lady. A sopho-tect is no more property than you or I. There is no record of the manufacture of this one. It was kept from any direct contact with the cybercosm. All points to the creation and maintenance of a slave.”

  The snake stirred, a rippling above her bosom, and raised its crested head. Was that a response to an invisible signal? Still smiling, she reached to stroke it under the jaw.

  “If data are absent, whom can you charge with the making?” she responded in the same half-amicable manner. “If it held itself apart, was that by its free choice, to preserve secrets entrusted to it? I cannot say. The machine mind is foreign to me. Ask it.”

  He wanted to state that she knew very well he could not. Mary Carfax had the means built in to wipe clean everything but the functional elements of its database. It had done so the moment the strangers made entry with obvious purpose. That included whatever compulsion to this had been in the program.

  As for its existence, it could have been built slowly, piecemeal, perhaps in the course of a human lifetime, in a laboratory now altered beyond retrieval. The Selenarchs thought far ahead. They schemed for advantages remote in time, unforeseeable except as possibilities dependent on contingency.

  Proserpina.

  He would not admit to his knowledge. Let her wonder how widely it ranged. “Investigation is proceeding. I repeat my suspicion that you no more wish to bring this business into the open than … the government does.”

  Her mockery continued through the lag. He saw it fade as she listened to him. Gone fluid, the countenance took on something akin to seriousness. “You imply accusation, seigneur,” she attacked softly. “You misdoubt I have sought knowledge denied to any but a few. What became of the lofty principle that information shall be open to all who query of the net?”

  He recognized it for an abstract argument, a way of disengaging. She would scarcely have hoped for more than to sound out the measure of his determination and estimate his progress. For her part, she had revealed or confessed to nothing. He admired the performance. The loss of the Carfax machine must be a sharp blow. It might well mean the unraveling of the entire web she had spun on Earth. It certainly indicated that her attempt at espionage had failed: for Alice Tam was Venator’s most probable connection to Carfax. He was not about to tell her that Tam remained loose, unimportant though that had become.

  Instead, he would press her. Maybe he could shock a bit of revelation out. “You’re being disingenuous, my lady. It’s always been accepted that certain facts must not be available to just anyone. For instance, how to synthesize a new disease. The cybercosm could readily model that, but it will not release the details, except to qualified persons with a genuine need to know. A criminal, intending to do it, would have to have computational capability isolated from the global system.” Harshly: “Why was that independent sophotect made, and why was it programmed never to mesh with the cybercosm?”

  He did not really expect an answer.

  Nor did he get one. “You own, then, seigneur, that the cybercosm makes every significant decision, that it rules over every world. Nay?”

  “I do not!” He shouldn’t let her anger him. “Are you subject to a hammer because it drives a nail better than you can with your fist?”

  After the lag, scorn. “Such shoddiness I had not looked for in you, Venator. Robots may be tools, however powerful and cunning, but sophotects are not. Nor are they partners, despite many a mawkish avowal. The cybercosm reigns, under the Teramind and for it. Humankind is in its pay, albeit to no purpose I can perceive—” laughter rang like crystal “—unless it be olden habit, or amusement.”

  He could not help himself, he must repeat arguments that had lain centuries stale. Otherwise he would somehow be yielding to her, and he felt obscurely that he did not know where that might end. “Do you mean citizens’ credit? Why, that’s simply the way we allocate, individually, the goods and services the machines produce for us, and keep track of demand. If we want to produce more and exchange with each other, we have our cash-and-bank currency.”

  Transmitting, she rebuffed him more frostily still. “Nay, how you disappoint me. Though you be a hound
for the regnancy, I had not thought your spirit was bribed into tameness.” The snake hissed.

  “Tameness, or common sense?” he flung back. “You Lunarians don’t tolerate chaos either. You’d soon be dead if you did.”

  Waiting, he composed himself. Why should he feel vulnerable to her? A single nightwatch—Nevertheless it was a balm when she said quietly, “We seek the survival of our race, and of variousness everywhere. If that be chaos, then remember that life is chaotic.”

  “And chaos within bounds is creative,” he agreed, eagerly taking what seemed to be an opening offered him. “You’ve given us splendors, you Lunarians. But can’t you understand, the cybercosm is creative too? Is alive too?” Impulse: “It accepts downloaded human minds into itself, you know, minds that can contribute something fresh. Would you consider yours joining in the adventure?”

  With his. Not that anything but a ghost of fleshly memories would linger, the seed outgrows the husk. And yet—

  Merriment pealed. “Eyach, and would they also like to put my bones on display? I have a most graceful skeleton.”

  “Must we be enemies?” he asked. “Is it impossible to make peace and, and cooperate?”

  Her laughter died away. An inward mirth abided.

  “If you care to talk further, at leisure, I will happily receive you again,” she purred.

  And distract him. No, not captivate him. He was no boy, no—a piece of archaic reading came back to twitch at his lips—mooncalf. But divert his attention. While he was not about to admit realizing what a trick she had played on him before, let alone that it had succeeded, he said, “Thank you. When time permits. I hope you will profit,” with a sardonicism directed more at himself than at her.

  How beautiful, how unfairly beautiful she stood in the light gravity of her lair, 384,000 kilometers out of his reach.

  “We both may,” she answered. “After all, the object of our quarrel lies in far space, does it not? Fare you well, seigneur.”

  The image vanished.

  At first he felt only the emptiness. After a second, he could grin and shake his head. Tension followed. Exactly what had she meant by that last remark?