Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  He tried to access the net but failed. The channel to Sivio was still nothing but noise. He waited a minute and, when the fire in the sky had faded, tried again. This time he got through. But Sivio was already gone, no doubt dragged away by other duties. Swallowing his nervousness, Alander dipped into the net and surrendered himself to the conSense feed.

  A chaotic menu of images confronted him, all blazing and changing in real time. He selected one at random and found himself staring at what looked like a shining, yellow spindle extruding a white-hot thread out of one pointed end. Despite heavy processing, he couldn’t make out the background to the spindle, and when he checked the scale in one corner of the image, he refused to believe it. If it was true, the spindle was over two kilometers long.

  He jumped to another image, this time noting its vantage point. He was in a Lagrangian point between Adrasteia and its one moon, high above the Tipler and most of the observation satellites. The familiar muddy-brown globe was alive with light. Arcs and spirals flashed into view, then just as quickly disappeared; sudden, startlingly straight lines stabbed out from the equator, then also vanished. There seemed to be no order to the display, as though data from a Day-Glo cloud chamber had been somehow mixed up with ordinary biospheric information. But already his incredulity was beginning to fade. This was no mix-up, and it was too elaborate to be a joke.

  A third view showed him a second spindle from far away. It was in geostationary orbit, and it, too, was extruding a burning line toward surface of the planet below. The end of the line was dropping steadily downward at a rate of several meters per second. The view shifted slightly to show another, darker thread appearing from the far end of the golden spindle.

  A counterweight, Alander instantly thought. My God, they’re building—

  “You’re seeing this, Peter?” Cleo Samson’s husky voice startled him.

  “It’s an orbital tower!” he said in response. “They’re building orbital towers!”

  The ground beneath his feet rumbled.

  “We know,” she said, her voice fuzzed with static. “Take a look at this.”

  Alander’s view shifted at another’s command, disorientating him momentarily. This time he saw a rough three-dimensional map of the world beneath his feet. There were seven golden spindles in geostationary orbit around Adrasteia; all were dropping threads of various lengths down to the surface. As Alander watched, another appeared in the display at the midpoint of the arc connecting two others. A rough measurement confirmed that the spindles were equally spaced around the equator—or would be if two more appeared to fill the obvious gaps. Within moments of the thought, they had done just that.

  Ten spindles building ten orbital towers. And the longitude of one of them was disturbingly close to Alander’s own.

  “Who the hell are they? Are they from Earth?” He dispensed with the communicator even though speaking into the void brought back the terrible feelings of dissociation that had dragged him to the surface in the first place. “Jayme? Cleo?”

  There was no answer from the Tipler, and a moment later the conSense feed began to break up again. He eased gratefully out of it and stood blinking under the golden sky. A roar he had not consciously noted before turned out to be the shuttle negotiating the tight confines of the canyon, blue white jets issuing from its curved, black underbelly. Alander backed away as it maneuvered closer and extruded landing struts. A gray python whipped out of its side before it had touched down and began to suck at the water in the bath. At the same time, a hatch lifted open on the side of the shuttle.

  “You have ten seconds to board.” The autopilot’s crisply accented voice spoke directly into his head.

  Alander took the hint and clambered up the rungs built into the side of the craft.

  The space inside was close and uncomfortable, not designed for biological passengers. There was barely room for the two other bodies it contained, propped awkwardly against a number of modular boxes and roughly strapped equipment. Alander had just enough time to get inside before thrust pushed him down onto one of the other bodies. He felt it shift beneath him and its breathing quicken, but otherwise it made no other response. Unoccupied, impersonal, corpselike, it could take no offense.

  He swore under his breath, irritated at being hijacked without warning or explanation.

  The shuttle’s engines whined, and the interior light flickered.

  “Where are we going?” he shouted over the noise.

  “Drop Point One,” the autopilot replied.

  “Why?”

  “That is where I’ve been instructed to take you.”

  “By whom?”

  “Survey Manager (Civilian) Caryl Hatzis.”

  He thought for a second, then asked: “What would you have done if I hadn’t boarded in time?”

  “I was instructed to leave without you.”

  Bitch.

  Alander did his best to ride out the bumps and dips. There was no response from conSense when he tried to bring it up again; either it was still being interfered with or the shuttle was keeping a low profile. ConSense—the communal illusion through which the virtual passengers of the Tipler interacted with each other and the world around them—required constant streams of data in both directions. The shuttle would stick out like a second sun if it logged him in.

  Not that it would be hard to miss, anyway. Judging by the forces acting on Alander’s body, the shuttle certainly seemed to be in a rush to reach its destination, six thousand kilometers to the southeast. But he didn’t resent Hatzis for this. It couldn’t be easy up there, dealing with... whatever they were. If they weren’t responding to hails, then that left everything open. One less chance taken could make a difference. She wasn’t to know.

  The lights flickered again, and he felt his stomach drop. For a second he was in free fall, then the shuttle braked hard and landed with a jerk. The engines whined a moment longer, then they quieted and the hatch opened. It was dark outside; his eyes weren’t designed for multifrequencing or hard radiation. He could see little apart from fog reflecting the shuttle’s landing lights.

  He sat up and waited, but nothing else happened.

  “Now what happens?”

  “I am to remain at Drop Point One and await further instructions,” the autopilot replied.

  “No, me,” said Alander irritably. “What the hell am I meant to be doing?”

  “I am unable to answer that.”

  “Great.” Clearly it hadn’t been told what he was supposed to do once he had arrived at the drop point. He forced himself to concentrate on why he might be there. Apart from being away from the down point of a possible orbital tower, he could see no immediate reason for his sudden relocation. DPO contained little more than a few sheds, a basic nanofacturing plant, and a maser relay for use in emergencies.

  That’s it, he thought with a sense of accomplishment. Only a month ago making such a connection would have been beyond him.

  He got out of the shuttle and walked across the landing field. The soles of his feet registered warmth from the heated concrete, but the rest of him was cold. Icily so. DPO was high on the lip of South Basin 2 and currently experiencing the local equivalent of winter. Had there been water vapor in the air, everything would have been covered with ice and snow.

  Even so, the main compound’s door was stiff. As he wrestled with it, a faint yellow glow shone through the clouds on the north horizon. The spindles were still spinning their webs, he gathered. How long until the towers were complete he couldn’t estimate, and what they would do next he had no idea at all. He figured that was pretty much up to them. Sooner or later, he was sure, they would make contact.

  By the time he had wrenched the door open, the compound was slowly coming alive. Lights flickered in empty rooms; air generators whirred into life; various software agents tried to connect with the conSense terminal in his skull. He resisted their approach automatically.

  “We weren’t expecting you, Dr. Alander,” said a voice. “We
had no time to prepare—”

  “That’s all right.” He found his way to what looked like a control room. It was cramped but uncluttered, designed for humans in physical form but obviously rarely used. “You weren’t to know I was coming.”

  “How can we assist you?”

  He stood in the doorway for a moment, disoriented. The AI had distracted him; he’d lost his train of thought. There had been a reason for him being here, he was sure of it. And then another disquieting thought: Where the hell was here?

  “Goddamn it,” he said aloud. Such breaks in concentration might have become less frequent, but they were no less disconcerting for that. Stress wasn’t helping.

  “Dr. Alander?”

  “Quiet,” he commanded. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The AI, Drop Point One, the shuttle, leaving the shelter, Cleo Samson’s voice, the spindles...

  The spindles.

  “I need access to the maser relay,” he said quickly, desperate not to lose the thought that had eluded him only moments before.

  “Yes, Dr. Alander. It is tracking and ready for use.”

  He eased himself into the seat. “How do I work it?”

  “That would depend on what you wish to do.”

  “I want a secure link with the Frank Tipler, as broad a bandwidth as you can manage.”

  “Just one moment.” The voice was silent for a moment, then returned with: “I am exchanging protocols now, Dr. Alander. Do you wish full immersion or audiovisual access? The audiovisual will—”

  “AV only,” he said without hesitation, not needing to hear that such a choice would reduce the number of options available to him.

  A stereoscopic wide screen lit up before him, giving him a similar display to the one he had accessed via conSense, but one he felt he could control more easily. He tapped an image with his fingertip, and it ballooned into the foreground. This image, unlike the others, was moving. It seemed to be coming from a probe in orbit around Adrasteia; telemetry data appended to the image showed that its source was decelerating at high g. The image showed the upper tip of one of the spindles in close-up. From this vantage point, the extrusion of the counterweight was more apparent: a black fluid of some kind was issuing from several holes around the tip and spinning into a seamless, dense thread that seemed to absorb the light falling upon it. The spindle’s golden halo was almost blinding at such close range, with electrical discharges dancing constantly across its surface. As the probe’s sensors tracked lower along the spindle, Alander couldn’t begin to guess what it was made of. It gleamed like metal yet seemed as translucent as amber. Through the glare, he sensed shifting machinery within, like the stirring of an embryonic wasp in its cocoon. There was nothing upon which he could anchor his perceptions. His gaze slid across suggestive surfaces and shadows; his mind grasped at understanding but missed. He felt like he did in his worst nightmares: lost, in danger, and so very, very small.

  There was an audio cue accompanying the visuals. He selected it via the infrared mods in the palm of one hand and heard the broadcast persona of the ship speaking on all the available frequencies:

  “This is United Near-Earth Stellar Survey Program Mission 842, Frank Tipler. Please respond. Our mission here is a peaceful one, and we mean you no harm. I repeat: This is United Near-Earth Stellar Survey Program Mission 842...”

  What if they don’t respond? he wondered. Then something even more chilling occurred to him: What if they haven’t even noticed that we’re here?

  The probe angled closer for a better view of the bottom tip of the spindle. There was a bright flash of light from the screen, and the feed from the probe went dead. All telemetry data instantly ceased.

  He winced. “That puts an end to that,” he muttered.

  “Peter?” Jayme Sivio’s voice cut across the identification broadcast from the Tipler.

  “Jayme? What’s going on? Why have—?”

  “I can’t talk long,” Sivio cut him short. “We’re ramping up to maximum and cutting everyone nonessential out of the loop. You’ll be okay, given your internal capacity. Just stay put and keep your eye on the feeds. We’re relaying everything to you as it comes in. Store it all in case something happens to us and the backup.”

  “I saw what happened to the probe—”

  “I know. We haven’t been approached, and we’re keeping our orbit well away from theirs. Until we know who they are and what they want, we can’t afford to take anything for granted. But for now we think you’re safe on the ground. Just take care, though, okay? You’re our backup backup, if you like.”

  Alander swallowed. “I understand.”

  “Good luck, Peter,” said Sivio. “And whatever you do, don’t try to call us. Keep a low profile, and we’ll contact you as soon as we can.”

  Alander nodded, but Sivio had already cut the line. The room fell silent. On the screen, there were images of the spindles going about their enigmatic work, seemingly oblivious to the humans watching from a distance. For the first time, he was struck by how alone he was on Adrasteia. There was nothing else but him and a handful of mundane AIs on the surface of the entire planet. If something did happen to the Tipler, he would be the only human left for dozens of light-years.

  What’s left of a human, anyway, he thought solemnly as he settled back to watch the show.

  1.1.4

  Caryl Hatzis felt fatigue in every cell of her body, from the ache in her spine to the hot swelling of her eyes. Her skin was greasy, her armpits smelled bad, and her brain simply couldn’t stay focused on one thing longer than a minute or two without sliding off into random thoughts.

  Too real, she thought. Too goddamn real by half.

  When the engram designers had copied her original’s thought processes and molded them into an electronic simulation, they had deliberately chosen to keep metabolic and hormonal traits like hunger, desire, and fatigue, acting on the sound belief that every component of a biological system contributes to its final state. Without fatigue, it was arguable that the engram of Caryl Hatzis would be fundamentally different from the original and might therefore malfunction under crisis.

  She wished they’d been just a little more carefree with her melatonin and cortisol levels. A little extra alertness in exchange for a little less her seemed like an excellent deal at the moment.

  “Can’t I declare martial law?”

  Jayme Sivio smiled at the suggestion. “And put me in charge?” he said. “That’s not the way it’s usually done, Caryl.”

  “But there is nothing usual about any of this: not the circumstances, not the Spinners themselves.” The term had been coined by Cleo Samson earlier and had been taken up readily by the rest of the crew. “Surely that in itself suggests we should completely rethink our procedures. I mean, wouldn’t you call this a military threat?”

  She indicated the ten golden spindles that had finished weaving their orbital towers and counterweights and were now busy at work joining the spindles along a giant ring encircling the planet. Strange lights arced between the ends of unconnected threads as they—whatever they were made of—interfered with the planet’s magnetic field. Two of the spindles had themselves begun to change, dimming in brightness and growing alarming spines at apparently random directions.

  She had also noted from the solar north data that the glitch that had preceded the arrival of the Spinners was still pulsing. There was no real reason to think that the phenomena were connected, but she couldn’t shake off her suspicions that they were.

  “Technically, yes, they are a threat.” Sivio’s tone was placating. “But the only hostility they have demonstrated has been when we have come too close to them. Losing two probes in ten hours does not warrant a change in procedure, Caryl. All they have done is indicate a desire to be left alone, and they have extended that same courtesy toward us.”

  “For now.”

  “Yes, for now. Until they change their behavior, we have no reason to change ours. Besides, what else can we do but wait and wat
ch?”

  She resisted the impulse to lash out at him. You could at least give me a fucking break. But she knew that would be unfair. She could leave the bridge at any time; fast-tracking could see her back in an hour or two, fully rested. But the thought of even that break galled her. She couldn’t leave, not when she was responsible for the lives of everyone on the Frank Tipler and off.

  Ten hours. At quadruple speed—the maximum the Tipler could maintain while simulating enough crew to run the ship—that equaled forty hours. They had turned over shifts eight times since the Spinners had come, but still she was there. Even Sivio had rested.

  She wondered what they called her behind her back. Then she wondered if paranoia was a symptom of exhaustion. It was certainly a symptom of command.

  “We’ve got something new here.” The announcement came from Nalini Kovistra, one of her two astrophysicists, who had been working almost as hard as she had. “We’re picking up gravitational waves from one of the towers.”

  “Can they hurt us?” Hatzis was a systems administrator, not a physicist.

  “No, but what’s making them might.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Gravitational waves occur as a result of sudden movements or changes of shape of massive objects, like neutron stars or black holes. If there’s something like that in one of those spindles—”

  “Could this be an attempt to communicate with us?” Sivio cut in.

  Nalini Kovistra’s reply was confident, but her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “As an alternative to electromagnetic radiation, it would be pretty poor. I mean, why juggle neutron material when you can simply point an antenna and talk?”

  “Well, if it’s not a weapon and not a communicator, what else could it be?” said Hatzis.