Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  Juan sat up nervously. “Into a being that will continue to change. Not instant homo superior, but with small steps over a long period of time. But we can only begin if we recognize how pitiable is the progress we can expect from purely political, religious, or educational regimes. Civilization has always reached a certain degree of civil order, but crimes and violence remain irreducible. We settle for a power pyramid in which everyone is disposable.”

  “Civil order is an achievement,” Malachi said.

  “It holds the fort, but the fort always falls, the culture dies and limps on to something else that always forgets its gains. Have you looked at the Earth lately? It's dying. And the alien web waits to be invaded, to become the next terrible arena of death. No amount of law or inner regimen will eliminate homicide, rape, or criminal economics, not to mention the endlessly growing network of personal cruelties, ego-power struggles, and vainglory that we call social life.”

  “But expansion into the web may also save humankind, such as it is,” Tasarov objected.

  “Would your decisive changes take away choice, and our capacity to be violent?” Lena asked. “I ask as a biologist, since you're saying there's no progress in being a human being.”

  “We could be a more humane creature, in whom reason wouldn't teeter on the edge, but would tip the balance. Not perfection, but an organism that would be in control of itself, that would be replanning itself from one generation to the next, aided by mirrors of self-knowledge. The body's history, as we have been given it, is an event horizon holding us in. Knowledge of what we are is fragmentary. We don't possess ourselves. We prize self-possession and knowledge, creativity and growth, but only taste these things. Human history is a shameful gloss on the evolutionary slaughterhouse. Genuine gains belong to an insignificant few who are always in danger of losing them.”

  “But where to start?” Tasarov asked eagerly.

  “Right in this ship. Slowly, we might begin to operate it.”

  “Familiarity breeds knowledge, eh?” Malachi said.

  “More like trial and error,” Juan replied. “A lifetime of it.”

  “Life inside a puzzle!” Tasarov shouted.

  Lena was silent.

  Tasarov struck the floor with his fist. “I will stay with you,” he said, “because I have a taste for ideal forms.”

  Juan looked at the viewspace. The soldiers were returning to the frame.

  “They've given up,” Tasarov said.

  As he watched the small black figures form a column and pass through the frame, he imagined that he was seeing a virus under a microscope. Superman is a good cry, a superior man had once written, and a good cry is half the battle, but it also breeds contempt for the human.

  He glanced at Lena. She seemed lost as she gazed past him. “I don't love humanity in a self-serving way,” he said to her, “which is the way it loves itself.”

  She glared at him. “You want to cut yourself off completely, but you want company! It's been tried.”

  “Yes, by religious and political groups who wanted to escape human failure by laying down new traditions, new ideals. We can't do worse, and we may do much better. It'll be a long time before small changes produce a new human type. Several hundred years may pass. . .”

  “I see. You will need a biologist, and some more population.”

  “Yes, when the time comes. And supplies, equipment.”

  “Who will help you?”

  “Titus might, or some variant of him. We'll start by trying to understand this ship.”

  Magnus said, “Juan, the fact is that we're incredibly stupid when it comes to this alien technology—and we have no way to measure just how stupid. I've tried to envision what you've been talking about, but I just can't see any hope for it. We've never been able to influence these ships one whit. You're off the deep end.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “I'll explore with you as long as it seems to make sense, even if I don't accept much of what you've said.”

  “Will you keep an open mind?”

  “I'll do so without much hope.”

  Juan looked at Malachi. “And what do you think, old friend? Am I around the bend?”

  The African smiled. “You've taken a bold leap inside yourself.”

  Tasarov shrugged. “What can I say, my friend? Life is short, nature very hostile, and man sublimely ridiculous. What have we to lose? When you part the Red Sea, there will be few doubters.”

  The green inner surface below was now free of creeping black ants. “I wonder,” Juan said, “if Summet told them about variants. The poor fools are in for a shock.”

  Lena looked at Juan anxiously. “Do you think they can reach us through one of the frames in this ship?”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “Any frame entrance to this ship would probably lead in from another ship. The shuttle may be the only way into this ship. It might not have even occurred to them that we could be out here.”

  “But there may be frames elsewhere,” she objected.

  Magnus said, “They don't know what they're looking for, and are unlikely to find it even if they did.”

  “Just as well,” Tasarov said. “What would we do if they somehow found their way in here? Kill them as they came through? And then what would we do? I will serve our dinner,” he said as he got to his feet. “Then we must sleep.”

  43. THE WALL

  He was poised to regain his lost youth, to confront death, and to find a new life for his kind. Rooms floated in gray nothingness, each a receptacle of yellow sunlight. What was it about a bright room? Light—matter's fugitive song—trapped in a finite interior. “Where are you?” he whispered across the inner light years. “Why did you build your web and abandon it? Don't you need it any more?” Secrets stood like fortresses around him. Many were small redoubts, hoarding their knowledge, but knowing that loss was inevitable. Larger fortresses held their secrets with pride if not certainty, knowing that loss was possible but not likely. The greatest fortresses were vaults of arrogance, defying all assaults of understanding. No probe would ever reach their infinitely desirable treasures. . .

  Lena nudged him awake. He sat up and saw that the ship was moving directly toward the green surface.

  “It may be some kind of spurious movement,” Magnus said. “There's no sign of an exit.”

  “We must use the shuttle,” Tasarov said, “or flee through one of the frames!” They all got to their feet.

  “Wait,” Magnus said. “Look!”

  A portion of the shell's inner surface reddened and grew large, revealing the ship's increasing speed. The vessel shot through—

  —into the glare of a yellow sun, and seemed to slow suddenly as comparisons were lost in open space. The view shifted to a green planet with two bone white moons. The three bodies grew larger.

  “Is that where we're going?” Tasarov asked. “What prompted the ship to leave?”

  Lena said, “The large ships also left without warning.”

  “But why?” Tasarov asked.

  Juan said, “We've always suspected that artificial intelligences ran these ships, and that they sometimes picked up things from us.”

  Tasarov looked puzzled. “You mean thoughts?”

  Juan nodded. “At one time it seemed that we were being probed, but it stopped, as if something had seen the error of trying to work with us.”

  Tasarov said, “Perhaps we're enough like the builders to elicit only a confused response.”

  The green planet grew larger in the viewspace. A flat side on the larger moon suggested that a piece had been sheared off by a major collision.

  “It does seem,” Juan said, “that these craft are controlled through mental links that select automatic programs, but our minds don't match the systems, so it's unlikely we'll be able to navigate.”

  “We can try!” Tasarov exclaimed. “What is there to lose?”

  “This craft,” Lena said, “may not have interstellar capacity.”

  “
We don't know that,” Juan replied.

  Tasarov said, “Maybe we should leave by one of the frames.”

  “We can do that any time,” Lena answered.

  Magnus pointed to the viewspace. “We're entering a high orbit above the green planet.”

  Wispy clouds covered the planet. Green and brown land masses wore lakes and rivers like jewels. The oceans varied from dark blue to magenta.

  “It's beautiful,” Lena said as light glinted off the northern icecap. “I find it hard to believe that in the end all this became nothing to them. They made their manufacturing, medical, and transport systems, and controlled the power of a galaxy's suns. Why wasn't it enough? What happened to them? It must have been a terrible accident of some kind.”

  Juan looked to the stars beyond the planet. All their discoveries had occurred through blind luck, but he could not accept that this would remain so indefinitely. Sooner or later they would learn more, and have that knowledge confirmed. He wondered if the ship's sudden departure had been an answer to his silent pleading.

  Lena gazed at him calmly and said, “Do you think the builders became what they wanted, what you want, powerful and knowing, and it wasn't enough?”

  He was silent, feeling inadequate.

  She gazed longingly at the planet. “Let's see what's down there.”

  “If the shuttle will take us,” Juan said.

  “Should we?” Malachi asked.

  “Why not,” Tasarov said. “We don't know what we're doing. Let impulses lead us.”

  “We'll go,” Juan said.

  “Too late,” Magnus said. “We're moving again.”

  The planet fell away to their right as the ship accelerated, and Juan felt that a clearer purpose had taken hold of the ship.

  “What now?” Tasarov asked, gesturing at the stars that now filled the forward view.

  Juan said, “It's accelerating toward a jump.”

  * * *

  Juan sat on his pack and watched the stars blue-shift in the forward view. “Maybe one of the frames connects with one of the other ships back at the dock.”

  Magnus said, “It's likely the ships were linked together from the outset. In any case, the dock holds the only way we know that leads home.”

  “We might not be able to get back down to the inner surface of the shell,” Tasarov added. “As far as we know, the shuttle attached to this ship is the only way. We'd be trapped aboard one of the other ships.”

  “But we have three frames here,” Lena said. “They may lead to a station from which we could go home.”

  “That might take a lot of trial and error,” Magnus replied.

  Juan felt uneasy as he gazed at the blue-shifted stars. The center of the field was fading into black only three hours after they had left the dock.

  “There's something different about this voyage,” Lena said. “Do you sense it, Juan?”

  “Yes,” he answered without looking at her, afraid that she would see his crowded, confused thoughts. “I feel the ship's attempting to take us where it thinks we want to go.”

  “And where might that be?” she asked.

  The viewspace flashed.

  “We've jumped,” Magnus said to Tasarov.

  The flash came again. A thin scattering of stars appeared in the viewspace.

  “No target star,” Malachi said.

  Juan tensed as the view flashed a third time. Nothing showed ahead.

  “A malfunction?” Tasarov asked.

  “We've never seen this,” Lena replied.

  “Are we still moving?” Tasarov asked.

  Magnus said, “We've entered a different kind of space.”

  Lena stood up and peered into the blackness. “There's something ahead. I feel it,” Her voice trembled.

  They watched the viewspace, as if awaiting a revelation. Juan felt detached. Are you somewhere here? he asked the darkness.

  “There!” Lena cried.

  He saw a faint red sphere. It grew large suddenly and filled the viewspace, masking all evidence of forward motion.

  “Are we landing?” Tasarov asked.

  “It seems solid,” Lena said.

  The surface flashed, as if reacting to the ship's arrival.

  “It's not a star,” Magnus said, “either in normal or other space—but we're in some kind of other space.”

  “I don't think we're moving at all,” Lena said.

  “Is it natural, or a construction?” Tasarov asked.

  “Maybe the ship can't enter,” Lena said, “and we're expected to use the shuttle.”

  44. THE EXALTED PLACE

  They went up through the shuttle's winding passage and entered the drum-shaped chamber. Juan stepped into the center. The viewspace came on, showing the red enigma before the ship.

  “We're not moving,” Magnus said after a moment. They waited. He shook his head. “And it violates everything we know if we're not orbiting. It's as if we've come to a wall of some kind that appears to us as a sphere.”

  “Why won't the shuttle take us in?” Lena asked.

  “Maybe we're not welcome,” Tasarov said.

  “What do you think this place is?” Juan asked him.

  “My friend, I would guess that this is where they are, the ones who built the web.”

  “But where is it?” Lena asked.

  “Not in any space we know,” Magnus said.

  “Why did the ship bring us here if the shuttle won't take us in?” she asked.

  “Another accident,” Magnus answered.

  * * *

  They went back into the ship, dropped their packs in the control chamber, and sat down. Juan looked up at the red glow that filled the viewspace, feeling that something was holding them at arm's length.

  Tasarov looked over at him and grimaced. “Suppose, my friend, that this is the place where the builders now live. Perhaps they didn't all come here at once. Some came first and others followed. This ship brought us here, as it might have countless others over time, until none were left, their empire abandoned.”

  “But what's here?” Lena asked.

  “A place to live,” Magnus said.

  “Yes!” Tasarov exclaimed. “But what is it, hidden behind a wall? I don't think that's a solid surface. It's only what we can see.”

  “I see what you're getting at,” Magnus said. “Is this a sealed-up area, a pocket, inside our universe?”

  “Perhaps,” Tasarov said, “but I think they were more ambitious than that. Once they learned how to escape into superspace, which is where I think we are now, they realized what could be done. They could free themselves of the universe from which they had sprung, from its physical laws. The web is the engineering infrastructure of an abandoned universe.”

  “Why abandoned?” Lena asked.

  “It may be,” Magnus said, “that they grew tired of working within the nature we know. Everything we've seen is a heroic attempt to overcome distance, biological limits, material scarcities. All are prosthetic solutions to the problem of entropy, ways of cheating the universe, by stealing energy from one place and using it in another, to make it do what you want, to help you survive, learn, shape. However successful such a civilization would be, it would still have to face the singularities between the cycles of expansion and collapse. Why not escape the pattern of birth and death completely, and build a universe that is not so hostile to the survival of intelligence? Once the starcrossers entered superspace, in which all universes exist, they realized that they could start from scratch, free of the realm that had bubbled up from some insane unconscious.”

  “How did they do this?” Tasarov asked.

  “They brought a ball of false vacuum—a region of densely packed material—out here into superspace, where they worked on its internal specifications, then let it inflate into a new universe. There may be countless such offshoots of our universe out here. All universes, ours included, materialize as quantum fluctuations in empty superspace, whenever that space contorts itself into an isolat
ed space. There may be two kinds—those that occur naturally, and those that are engineered by highly advanced intelligences.”

  As he listened, Juan realized that his war with himself, with his kind's history, with nature itself, might end. A creative divorce was possible.

  “We have come out from an evil land,” Tasarov said, “inside the gates of hell.”

  Lena asked, “Do you truly think that?”

  “Of course! Consider our universe, its limits, its heartbreaks. It'sagainst so much. I find it rational that the starcrossers went and built their heaven rather than continue to renovate the mortal treadmill of our space-time.”

  “Yes,” Magnus said, “but they were good at it. Just imagine what it took to build the web. To start, they probably removed a wormhole from the quantum foam and enlarged it to classical size, using the energy of a sun. Then they lengthened it, learned to transmit energy and later themselves through the lines. The jump ships operate on an intermittent use of wormholes, which don't last, but get a ship from point to point. They realized that wormholes implied time travel, which led to an understanding of how natural laws might be suspended. That enabled them to exit into superspace, where they designed their new universe.”

  “But we never encountered any time travel effects,” Lena objected.

  “They had no need of it,” Magnus replied. “It was the violation of the average weak energy condition that was significant, because it meant that physical law could be remade, albeit in a suitable context. Time travel within our universe would have given them dominance over their own history, but to what end? The remaking of themselves and the creation of their own sealed-off universe in superspace was a much nobler task.”

  “And that's where they are now,” she said, “in there.”

  “In there is a literal way of putting it,” Magnus replied.

  “I'm a biologist, Magnus. Say what you mean.”

  “The universe beyond that horizon may be infinite,” he continued. “If they created it, they might also be masters of scale. Their universe might have been no larger than a walnut and still be infinite.”

  “They must have known,” Lena continued, “that others would find what they left behind. Not just us. How many other races might our universe contain?”