by Ian Douglas
As peaceful and prosperous as the city seemed, Kara found she couldn't shake a growing sense of ominous presence, a shadow across New America's citizenry even in the light of the two suns overhead. Many of the people she saw were in uniform—striderjacks and naval personnel off Confederation ships in orbit. Accessing the medefeeds through her hubot's comreceiver, she scanned through program after program discussing a single topic: the likelihood of renewed war with the Empire.
That evening, Kara and her mother, Senator Katya Alessandro, sat opposite one another at an elegant table perched high atop a wild, sheer cliff overlooking the spray-whipped sea. The sky overhead was rose-gloried, streaked with clouds as Columbia hung ponderously above the sea to the east. Kara took another bite from the plate before her, closing her eyes and reveling in the aromatic and faintly spicy blend of flavors that spread like liquid ecstasy through her mouth and into her brain.
Her dish, labeled simply "Number 196" in the program's menu, looked like a chicken stew, but its taste and smell were literally indescribable. As the morsel touched her tongue, it dissolved, releasing a cascade of flavors and less identifiable sensations all tailor-made for her nervous system, the effect nearly orgasmic as it sent a series of shudders down her spine.
"Whew!" she said, when she could draw breath once more.
"Good, huh?" Katya said, grinning at her from across the table.
"That doesn't describe it by a tenth! I can see how people could become addicted to this sort of thing."
"Mmm. Let's hear it for the NPRs."
Direct neural feeds, starting with the most primitive brain-machine interfaces of five centuries before, had naturally and immediately led to serious abuses. In every culture and in every age there were people who would willingly addict themselves to intense pleasure or rich sensations, whether through drugs or, these days, by way of a relatively simple pleasure center download.
At the same time, modem technic civilization encouraged the sampling of as wide and as rich a variety of experiences as possible. True addiction, though, was rare, thanks to NPRs, the neuroprogrammer routines piggybacked onto the AI monitoring and controlling their meal and similar pleasures that helped break chemical bond dependencies as they formed. She couldn't become addicted to the intense pleasure associated with this food, even if she wanted to. But after a bite or two, she could begin to understand what led people to want such an addiction.
Kara let the sensations fade into the background of mind and body. She stared off toward the east for a moment, watching the looming pale globe of Columbia. Despite the evidence of their senses, the two of them were sitting together in the spire-top disk of the Columbiarise, one of Jefferson's more elegant ViRestaurants. Their surroundings, as well as the meal itself, were simulated. The Columbiarise specialized in virtual meals, with an extraordinarily detailed and comprehensive menu of flavors, textures, odors, and gustatory sensations compiled over the last couple of centuries available for selective downloading. The scene around them was illusory but meticulously perfect in every detail, down to the smell of salt air and the caress of the sea breeze on their faces. They'd chosen to dine alone, rather than in the company of the facility's other patrons, so it appeared that there were just the two of them on an open deck a hundred meters above the sea, at a table of light open to the azure, red, and gold New American sky. Columbia, ocher and russet, made pale by a thin haze of clouds in New America's atmosphere, rose slowly in the east . . . the Columbiarise's trademark ViRsimulation.
Kara's sim was the more illusory of the two. It looked as though her own body was sitting at the table and enjoying the meal, but she was still linked to her hubot, and the imagery of her presence was entirely electronic. For Katya, there was real food before her at a real table, but the restaurant was downloading both simulated surroundings and highly detailed information about her food through direct sensory feeds. In a sense, both women were living in their own virtual worlds, created by the restaurant AI in their minds; the program, however, let them share the illusion, so that they could talk and interact.
Talk. It was as wonderful as the virtual food, in a way, a golden chance to be with her mother, quietly and without interruption. For one thing, it offered superb privacy, a literal meeting of minds where she could talk about Dev's strange suggestion about the use of the stargates to travel through time. More than that, however, she was glad for the opportunity to simply enjoy her mother's company. There'd been precious few such opportunities in the recent past. Katya Alessandro was a woman whose political career sometimes bulked huge and formidable, an impenetrable fortress wall to her daughter.
It had taken a lot of effort for Kara to scale those walls . . . and to discover that she'd possessed walls of her own.
"So, what do you think?" Kara asked at last. "About all of the Imperial propaganda, I mean."
"I really don't know, Kara. It could be war."
"Bastards! Why can't they leave us alone?"
"From their point of view," Katya told her, "it's the right thing to do."
"How can you say that? We've been independent since the Treaty of Kingu. They don't own us any more!"
"As they see it, we split from the Hegemony, the government that speaks for mankind. It was a breach of the peace, and of civilized behavior."
Kara snorted. "Civilized behavior! I'll give them civilized behavior!"
"Put it this way, then. We acted in an uncivilized manner. We have to be punished and shown where we went wrong. Then we have to be returned to the family. To the Hegemony. Especially now, when we're facing the Web. Union in the face of an enemy is very important to the Imperials."
"Yeah. Union with the Hegemony. Only it's got to be on their terms, not ours. Damn it, Mums. We don't have a gokking thing to do with the Empire or their puppet Terran Hegemony any more. It's time they learned that!"
"Racist thinking, Kara," her mother said, shaking her head. "No, worse. Tribal thinking. Too many people forget that we have a hell of a lot more in common with the Empire than we have against them."
Kara felt uncomfortable with that. All of her training, her experience, everything she'd known and learned and downloaded since joining the Confederation military had led her to perceive the Japanese as aliens, as different from New Americans or other inhabitants of the Frontier in some ways of thought and perception as the Naga. While Katya took another bite from her plate, Kara downloaded a fragment of text, quoting from Sinclair's Declaration of Reason. " 'We hold that the differences between mutually alien, albeit human cultures render impossible a thorough understanding of the needs, necessities, aspirations, goals, and dreams of those disparate worlds by any central governing body. . . . ' "
"Nice words," Katya said, smiling to remove the sarcastic edge. She chewed for a moment, closing her eyes as she savored the bite. "Ohh. Remind me to get together with you like this more often. I think I'm in love."
Kara laughed. "Any time, Mums. As long as you're paying. Captains don't get megs enough for this kind of high-input living very often."
"I've got a straight-hont download for you. Neither do senators, unless they're willing to take bribes. Maybe we should turn data pirate."
A laugh. "Maybe. Anyway, Sinclair also said that the Japanese culture is an imposition on values descended from Western thought and ideals."
"Yes, he did. But the fact remains that you and I are closer to the Japanese . . . hell, we're closer to chimpanzees, no, to shelf fungus than we are to the Naga. Or the DalRiss. And the Web, well, that's more alien still."
"Sure. But, well, maybe it's the similarities, the things we share with them, that make us natural rivals."
"I don't deny that."
"Besides, don't forget that there's more to this than anti-Japanese paranoia. They don't like us any more than most of us like them. Gaijinophobes, most of 'em, who figure we're no better than hairy, smelly barbarians. From what I've heard, I keep wondering why they want so badly to hold onto us. You'd think after we made our preferen
ces clear back in '44, they'd just say the gok with us and let us go our own way."
"I suspect, Kara, that they know they can't afford to. Barbarian or not, we, the Frontier, are an asset, a valuable and irreplaceable asset for the entire human race. Tokyo's leaders may be wondering right now if their whole Empire isn't already falling into the same trap as Old Earth. Ultra conservative. Ultra safe. And, in the long run, at least, doomed to become ultra extinct."
Kara nodded. It was common knowledge—on the Periphery, at least—that successive waves of migration had carried Earth's brightest and boldest first to the nearer stars, and then, as the process continued century after century, to those systems a bit further out, a kind of winnowing process that eventually left New Earth and Chiron and Greenhome and Meiyo and the other populated worlds within fifteen light years or so of Sol almost as inflexibly set in their ways as Old Earth herself.
The majority of Earthers today were happy with their crowded, tightly ordered world. Kara found that an utterly and bizarrely alien thought.
"Look, I'll give you the argument that we're all human. But you've got to admit that Japanese culture is fundamentally different from ours. They think differently than we do."
"Not as differently as a planetary Naga."
Kara laughed. "I don't think anything is that different."
"Different or not," Katya said with a shrug, "it hardly matters in the long run. If the Empire is determined to pull us back into the fold, I really don't know that there's anything we can do to stop them. Our navy is better than it was, but still no match for the Imperials. Hell, we shouldn't have won the last war with the Empire, much less this one!"
"So," Kara said after a long and thoughtful silence. "If we do get into a stand-up fight with the Empire, we lose. What can we do about it?"
"I'm intrigued by Dev's idea," Katya said.
"Trying to find out how to beat the Web?" Kara shook her head, puzzled. "I don't understand. How does that help us with the Empire?"
"First," Katya said, "information always confers an advantage. Always. If we can learn something about the Web that the Empire doesn't know, that gives us a stronger position to bargain from."
"I'll go along with that."
"Besides . . . who knows? We might find some friends on the other side. God knows we need them."
"Well, if we could find someone who didn't mind risking tampering with the future . . . with their present, I should say." She had her doubts about that.
"Okay, then. Weapons. Technology. Anything to even out the balance between us and the Empire."
"So you'll authorize the expedition?"
"I certainly will."
"I'd like to go along."
Katya closed her eyes, then opened them again. "Why?"
"Because I want to do something useful."
They'd had this conversation, or variants of it, before. Katya, Kara knew, hated issuing orders that could so easily lead to her daughter's death in combat. Kara, for her part, disliked intensely the idea that her parents—a general and a senator—might be interfering with her career, either to save her life or to gentle the rough and rocky road to promotion.
"What do you think you've been doing?" Katya asked her.
"Gok. Flying through the Stargate and getting blown to bits in the Galactic Core isn't useful. It's make-work for bureaucrats, making them fill out the after-action reports on us and counting up the RDTSs. It seems to me that this idea of Dev's offers us a chance to really hit back at the Web."
"Maybe so." Katya was thoughtful for a moment. "If we can put an expedition like this together, who do you think should go?"
"You're asking me? I'm just a captain. I don't set policy."
"Mmm. Okay, but I do set policy . . . and I respect your judgment. I need it, in fact. If you were leading a mission through the Gate into the future, how much firepower would you want to take along?"
Kara thought a moment. "I suppose the whole damned Confederation Navy is the wrong answer."
Her mother smiled. "Good assumption."
"Well, the problem is we wouldn't really have any idea what we should be looking for, what we might meet. Whatever we met, though, chances are we wouldn't care to take it on in a stand-up fight. So it would have to be a scouting expedition. Small and light." Kara paused, looking across the table at her mother with a calculating expression. "I'll tell you what we'd need, though."
"What's that?"
"The best damned xenologists we have. You mentioned finding allies? We'll need to talk to them."
"You're thinking of Daren and Taki."
Taki Oe was her half-brother's sharelife, a Japanese-New-American who worked with him at the University of Jefferson. Both were full technical doctors of xenology and had considerable experience with xenocontact scenarios.
Kara nodded. "I don't always like my brother, but he's good at what he does. And I do like Taki. I'll tell you what else we'll need."
"What?"
"Dev Cameron."
Her mother's eyes widened a bit, and pain flicked raw behind them, the subtleties of expression showing even through the ViRsim linkage.
"We'll need the usual ship AIs, of course," Kara went on, "but if we could find a way to bring Dev along as our Net interface, I think it would be a big help."
"How?"
"Translation. Communication with alien networks. He knows the human Net, and when we got back he'd be the logical channel for downloading what we've learned to the Net." She didn't add that Dev had told her he intended to come along. What is she thinking, Kara wondered. With both kids and her former lover planning on running off on this weird, wild crusade?
She couldn't read her mother's expression, however. After a long moment, Katya sighed. "Tell me something, Kara. Just between us, okay?"
"Sure."
"It's personal. How do you feel about another war with the Imperium?"
A flip answer came to mind immediately, something about the Empire not learning its lesson the first time around, but her mother's persona was projecting such a serious expression that Kara didn't give it. "Do you mean whether or not I think we can win? Or how I think it'll affect me personally?"
"How it affects you. You don't have to answer that, of course—"
"Oh, I don't mind talking about it. It's been on my mind for quite a while. I suppose I see some opportunity, of course. Promotions come a lot more easily when there's a war on. And I'm scared. Scared of dying. Scared of ending up in a virtual world with no physical body." She managed a small smile.
"I can imagine." Katya hesitated. "And on the grand scale? Do you think a war like that would be right?"
"Well, I used to. I guess I still do, though you've given me a lot to think about. It was easier thinking of Japanese culture as so different from ours that there aren't that many points of contact. You know, us against them. But you're right about us being the same species. And we're both threatened by the Web. We're going to have to find a way to work with the Empire, or we're going to go under."
Katya thought for a moment. "Damn. Why is being human so complicated?"
"Are you looking for a way to justify a war with the Empire?" She almost sounded as though she were trapped and searching for an honorable way out, a way to give in to the Imperial demands and avoid the oncoming conflict.
"Kara, nothing can justify war. The waste. The horror. Nothing."
Kara reared back, startled. She'd never heard her mother speak that way before. Dev, she thought. She's still missing Dev after all of these years, and she hates the war that took him from her.
It gave her a new insight. Just as Kara didn't want to lose any more of her people in useless gestures against the Web, Katya didn't want to be forced into the position once again of having to sign the orders that might well kill millions . . . including, quite possibly, people she loved. Still, how did you avoid a war when the other guy was determined to have one? When immediate and unconditional surrender was the only alternative . . . what did you d
o?
Not for the first time, Kara was glad that her leadership skills were limited to the bossing of a single warstrider company.
The conversation shifted after that, to things less threatening, less confrontational. Later, Katya paid for their meal. With the shifting light of a brightening dawn, but much faster, the spectacular vista around them faded away, replaced by a more conventional restaurant. Viewalls looked out over the city of Jefferson, with a view south toward spaceport and sea. Other patrons sat at their meals, lost in their own private world, oblivious to all of the other patrons. The two women walked toward the central lift tube that would take them back to ground level.
"You know, Mums," Kara said as they rode the capsule down the restaurant tower, "there is one thing that justifies war."
"Yes? What's that?"
"The only thing that counts in the long run for any culture, any civilization, any species for that matter." She was thinking about the impossibility of the Confederation facing the Empire one-on-one, and about what might happen if they failed.
"Survival," Kara said. "In the long run, we're fighting for our own survival, and it may be that that's all that really matters."
Chapter 11
The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it's queerer than we can imagine.
—J. B. S. HALDANE
British biochemist
mid-twentieth century C.E.
Revelation held Dr. Daren Cameron in a trembling grip that was close to ecstasy. Slowly, slowly, he let out a long breath. My God, he thought, and he had to stifle the impulse to laugh out loud. My God, that's it! It's got to be!
He seemed to be hovering above a vast, fluid-filled canyon, with gray-yellow walls that gave anchor to a vast and gently waving forest of indistinct growths, like endlessly trailing fronds of kelp in a darkening sea. The object of his interest, though, seemed an obvious intruder in this aqueous realm, a tangled, three-dimensional mass of glistening and translucent threads adhering to one of the nearby walls, sprouting filaments that at this scale looked like gleaming, transparent tubes. Clearly visible within those tubes, dark-colored, elongated cells, pointed at front and back, slipped along nose to tail in endless, gliding processions. The tubes crisscrossed everywhere through the murk but were concentrated here within this nexus, in the silvery-gray mass growing from the canyon wall. The web of filaments stretched off in every direction, their meanderings swiftly lost in the distance.
