Women in Deep Time

by Greg Bear

  Right over the boundary into Senexi information. She knew then that what she was seeing couldn’t possibly come from within herself. She was receiving data from another source. Perhaps she had been taken captive. It was possible she was now being forcibly debriefed. The tellman had discussed such possibilities, but none of the glovers had been taught how to defend themselves in specific situations. Instead it had been stated—in terms that brooked no second thought that self destruction was the only answer. So she tried to kill herself.

  She sat in the freezing cold of a red and white room, her feet meeting but not touching a fluid covering on the floor. The information didn’t fit her senses—it seemed blurred, inappropriate. Unlike the other data, this didn’t allow participation or motion. Everything was locked solid.

  She couldn’t find an effective means of killing herself. She resolved to close her eyes and simply will herself into dissolution. But closing her eyes only moved her into a deeper or shallower level of deception—other categories, subjects, visions. She couldn’t sleep, wasn’t tired, couldn’t die.

  Like a leaf on a stream, she drifted. Her thoughts untangled, and she imagined herself floating on the water called ocean. She kept her eyes open. It was quite by accident that she encountered:

  Instruction. Welcome to the introductory use of the mandate. As a noncombat processor, your duties are to maintain the mandate, provide essential information for your overs, and, if necessary, protect or destroy the mandate. The mandate is your immediate over. If it requires maintenance, you will oblige. Once linked with the mandate, as you are now, you may explore any aspect of the information by requesting delivery. To request delivery, indicate the core of your subject

  Prufrax! she shouted silently. What is Prufrax?

  A voice with different tone immediately took over.

  Ah, now that’s quite a story. I was her biographer, the organizer of her life tapes (ref. GEORGE MACKNAX), and knew her well in the last years of her life. She was born in the Ferment 26468. Here are selected life tapes. Choose emphasis. Analyses follow.

  Hey! Who are you? There’s someone here with me….

  Shh! Listen. Look at her. Who is she?

  They looked, listened to the information.

  Why, she’s me…sort of.

  —She’s us.

  She stood two and a half meters tall. Her hair was black and thick, though cut short; her limbs well muscled though drawn out by the training and hormonal treatments. She was seventeen years old, one of the few birds born in the solar system, and for the time being she had a chip on her shoulder. Everywhere she went, the birds asked about her mother, Jayax. “You better than her?”

  Of course not! Who could be? But she was good; the instructors said so. She was just about through training, and whether she graduated to hawk or remained bird she would do her job well. Asking Prufrax about her mother was likely to make her set her mouth tight and glare.

  On Mercior, the Grounds took up four thousand hectares and had its own port. The Grounds was divided into Land, Space, and Thought, and training in each area was mandatory for fledges, those birds embarking on hawk training. Prufrax was fledge three. She had passed Land—though she loathed downbound fighting and was two years into Space. The tough part, everyone said, was not passing Space, but lasting through four years of Thought after the action in nearorbit and planetary.

  Prufrax was not the introspective type. She could be studious when it suited her. She was a quick study at weapon maths, physics came easy when it had a direct application, but theory of service and polinstruc which she had sampled only in prebird courses—bored her.

  Since she had been a little girl, no more than five—

  Five! Five what?

  and had seen her mother’s ships and fightsuits and fibs, she had known she would never be happy until she had ventured far out and put a seedship in her sights, had convinced a Senexi of the overness of end—

  -The Zap! She’s talking the Zap!

  -What’s that?

  -You’re me, you should know.

  -I’m not you, and we’re not her.

  The Zap, said the mandate, and the data shifted.

  “Tomorrow you receive your first implants. These will allow you to coordinate with the zero angle phase engines and find your targets much more rapidly than you ever could with simple biologic. The implants, of course, will be delivered through your noses minor irritation and sinus trouble, no more—into your limbic system. Later in your training, hookups and digital adapts will be installed as well. Are there any questions?”

  “Yes, sir.” Prufrax stood at the top of the spherical classroom, causing the hawk instructor to swivel his platform. “I’m having problems with the zero angle phase maths. Reduction of the momenta of the real.”

  Other fledge threes piped up that they, too, had had trouble with those maths. The hawk instructor sighed. “We don’t want to install cheaters in all of you. It’s bad enough needing implants to supplement biologic. Individual learning is much more desirable. Do you request cheaters?” That was a challenge. They all responded negatively, but Prufrax had a secret smile. She knew the subject. She just took delight in having the maths explained again. She could reinforce an already thorough understanding. Others not so well versed would benefit. She wasn’t wasting time. She was in the pleasure of her weapon the weapon she would be using against the Senexi.

  “Zero angle phase is the temporary reduction of the momenta of the real.” Equations and plexes appeared before each student as the instructor went on. “Nested unreals can conflict if a barrier is placed between the participator princip and the assumption of the real. The effectiveness of the participator can be determined by a convenience model we call the angle of phase. Zero angle phase is achieved by an opaque probability field according to modified Fourier of the separation of real waves. This can also be caused by the reflection of the beam an effective counter to zero angle phase, since the beam is always compoundable and the compound is always time reversed. Here are the true gedanks—”

  Zero angle phase. She’s learning the Zap.

  She hates them a lot, doesn’t she?

  The Senexi? They’re Senexi.

  —I think…eyes open is the world of the Senexi. What does that mean?

  That we’re prisoners. You were caught before me.

  Oh.

  The news came as she was in recovery from the implant. Seedships had violated human space again, dropping cuckoos on thirty five worlds. The worlds had been young colonies, and the cuckoos had wiped out all life, then tried to reseed with Senexi forms. The overs had reacted by sterilizing the planet’s surfaces. No victory, loss to both sides. It was as if the Senexi were so malevolent they didn’t care about success, only about destruction.

  She hated them. She could imagine nothing worse.

  Prufrax was twenty three. In a year she would be qualified to hawk on a cruiser/raider. She would demonstrate her hatred.

  Aryz felt himself slipping into endthought, the mind set that always preceded a branch ind’s self destruction. What was there for him to do? The fragment had survived, but at what cost, to what purpose? Nothing had been accomplished. The nebula had been lost, or he supposed it had. He would likely never know the actual outcome.

  He felt a vague irritation at the lack of a spectrum of responses. Without a purpose, a branch ind was nothing more than excess plasm.

  He looked in on the captive and the shapes, all hooked to the mandate, and wondered what he would do with them. How would humans react to the situation he was in? More vigorously, probably. They would fight on. They always had. Even without leaders, with no discernible purpose, even in defeat. What gave them such stamina? Were they superior, more deserving? If they were better, then was it right for the Senexi to oppose their triumph?

  Aryz drew himself tall and rigid with confusion. He had studied them too long. They had truly infected him. But here at least was a hint of purpose. A question needed to be answered.

>   He made preparations. There were signs the brood mind’s flux bind was not permanent, was in fact unwinding quite rapidly. When it emerged, Aryz would present it with a judgment, an answer.

  He realized, none too clearly, that by Senexi standards he was now a raving lunatic.

  He would hook himself into the mandate, improve the somewhat isolating interface he had used previously to search for selected answers. He, the captive, and the shapes would be immersed in human history together. They would be like young suckling on a Population I mother-animal just the opposite of the Senexi process, where young fed nourishment and information into the brood mind.

  The mandate would nourish, or poison. Or both.

  —Did she love?

  —What—you mean, did she receive?

  —No, did she we I give?

  —I don’t know what you mean.

  I wonder if she would know what I mean….

  Love, said the mandate, and the data proceeded.

  Prufrax was twenty nine. She had been assigned to a cruiser in a new program where superior but untested fighters were put into thick action with no preliminary. The program was designed to see how well the Grounds prepared fighters; some thought it foolhardy, but Prufrax found it perfectly satisfactory.

  The cruiser was a million ton raider, with a hawk contingent of fifty three and eighty regular crew. She would be used in a second wave attack, following the initial hardfought.

  She was scared. That was good; fright improved basic biologic, if properly managed. The cruiser would make a raid into Senexi space and retaliate for past cuckoo seeding programs. They would come up against thornships and seedships, likely.

  The fighting was going to be fierce.

  The raider made its final denial of the overness of the real and pipsqueezed into an arduous, nasty sponge space. It drew itself together again and emerged far above the galactic plane.

  Prufrax sat in the hawks wardroom and looked at the simulated rotating snowball of stars. Red coded numerals flashed along the borders of known Senexi territory, signifying old stars, dark hulks of stars, the whole ghostly home region where they had first come to power when the terrestrial sun had been a mist wrapped youngster. A green arrow showed the position of the raider.

  She drank sponge space supplements with the others but felt isolated because of her firstness, her fear. Everyone seemed so calm. Most were fours or fives—on their fourth or fifth battle call. There were ten ones and an upper scatter of experienced hawks with nine to twenty five battles behind them. There were no thirties. Thirties were rare in combat; the few that survived so many engagements were plucked off active and retired to PR service under the polinstructors. They often ended up in fibs, acting poorly, looking unhappy.

  Still, when she had been more naive, Prufrax’s heroes had been a man-and woman thirty team she had watched in fib after fib Kumnax and Arol. They had been better actors than most.

  Day in, day out, they drilled in their fightsuits. While the crew bustled, hawks were put through implant learning, what slang was already calling the Know, as opposed to the Tell, of classroom teaching. Getting background, just enough to tickle her curiosity, not enough to stimulate morbid interest.

  There it is again. Feel?

  —I know it. Yes. The round one, part of eyes open…

  Senexi?

  No, brother without name.

  —Your…brother?

  —No…I don’t know.

  Can it hurt us?

  —It never has. It’s trying to talk to us.

  Leave us alone!

  It’s going.

  Still, there were items of information she had never received before, items privileged only to the fighters, to assist them in their work. Older hawks talked about the past, when data had been freely available. Stories circulated in the wardroom about the Senexi, and she managed to piece together something of their origins and growth.

  Senexi worlds, according to a twenty, had originally been large, cold masses of gas circling bright young suns nearly metal free. Their gas giant planets had orbited the suns at hundreds of millions of kilometers and had been dusted by the shrouds of neighboring dead stars; the essential elements carbon, nitrogen, silicon, and fluorine had gathered in sufficient quantities on some of the planets to allow Population II biology.

  In cold ammonia seas, lipids had combined in complex chains. A primal kind of life had arisen and flourished. Across millions of years, early Senexi forms had evolved. Compared with evolution on Earth, the process at first had moved quite rapidly. The mechanisms of procreation and evolution had been complex in action, simple in chemistry

  There had been no competition between life forms of different genetic bases. On Earth, much time had been spent selecting between the plethora of possible ways to pass on genetic knowledge.

  And among the early Senexi, outside of predation there had been no death. Death had come about much later, self imposed for social reasons. Huge colonies of protoplasmic individuals had gradually resolved into the team forms now familiar.

  Soon information was transferred through the budding of branch inds; cultures quickly developed to protect the integrity of larvae, to allow them to regroup and form a new brood mind. Technologies had been limited to the rare heavy materials available, but the Senexi had expanded for a time with very little technology. They were well adapted to their environment, with few predators and no need to hunt, absorbing stray nutrients from the atmosphere and from layers of liquid ammonia. With perceptions attuned to the radio and microwave frequencies, they had before long turned groups of branch inds into radio telescope chains, piercing the heavy atmosphere and probing the universe in great detail, especially the very active center of the young galaxy. Huge jets of matter, streaming from other galaxies and emitting high energy radiation, had provided laboratories for their vicarious observations. Physics was a primitive science to them.

  Since little or no knowledge was lost in breeding cycles, cultural growth was rapid at times; since the dead weight of knowledge was often heavy, cultural growth often slowed to a crawl.

  Using water as a building material, developing techniques that humans still understood imperfectly, they prepared for travel away from their birthworlds.

  Prufrax wondered, as she listened to the older hawks, how humans had come to know all this. Had Senexi been captured and questioned? Was it all theory? Did anyone really know—anyone she could ask?

  —She’s weak.

  —Why weak?

  —Some knowledge is best for glovers to ignore. Some questions are best left to the supreme overs.

  Have you thought that in here, you can answer her questions, our questions?

  No. No. Learn about me us first.

  In the hour before engagement, Prufrax tried to find a place alone. On the raider this wasn’t difficult. The ship’s size was overwhelming for the number of hawks and crew aboard. There were many areas where she could put on an environs and walk or drift in silence, surrounded by the dark shapes of equipment wrapped in plexerv. There was so much about ship operations she didn’t understand, hadn’t been taught. Why carry so much excess equipment, weapons—far more than they’d need even for replacements? She could think of possibilities—superiors on Mercior wanting their cruisers to have flexible mission capabilities, for one—but her ignorance troubled her less than why she was ignorant. Why was it necessary to keep fighters in the dark on so many subjects?

  She pulled herself through the cold g less tunnels, feeling slightly awked by the loneness, the quiet. One tunnel angled outboard, toward the hull of the cruiser. She hesitated, peering into its length with her environs beacon, when a beep warned her she was near another crew member. She was startled to think someone else might be as curious as she. The other hawks and crew, for the most part, had long outgrown their need to wander and regarded it as birdish. Prufrax was used to being different—she had always perceived herself, with some pride, as a bit of a freak. She scooted expertly up the tunn
el, spreading her arms and tucking her legs as she would in a fightsuit.

  The tunnel was filled with a faint milky green mist, absorbing her environs beam. It couldn’t be much more than a couple of hundred meters long, however, and it was quite straight. The signal beeped louder.

  Ahead she could make out a dismantled weapons blister. That explained the fog: a plexerv aerosol diffused in the low pressure. Sitting in the blister was a man, his environs glowing a pale violet. He had deopaqued a section of the blister and was staring out at the stars. He swiveled as she approached and looked her over dispassionately. He seemed to be a hawk—he had fightform, tall, thin with brown hair above hull white skin, large eyes with pupils so dark she might have been looking through his head into space beyond.

  “Under,” she said as their environs met and merged.

  “Over. What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same.”

  “You should be getting ready for the fight,” he admonished.

  “I am. I need to be alone for a while.”

  “Yes.” He turned back to the stars. “I used to do that, too.”

  “You don’t fight now?”

  He shook his head. “Retired. I’m a researcher.”

  She tried not to look impressed. Crossing rates was almost impossible. A bitalent was unusual in the service.

  “What kind of research?” she asked.

  “I’m here to correlate enemy finds.”

  “Won’t find much of anything, after we’re done with the zero phase.”

  It would have been polite for him to say, “Power to that,” or offer some other encouragement. He said nothing.

  “Why would you want to research them?”

  “To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat.”

  “You research tactics?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What, then?”

  “You’ll be in a tough hardfought this wake. Make you a proposition. You fight well, observe, come to me and tell me what you see. Then I’ll answer your questions.”