Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “If you mean they have given you things they no longer have need for, then yes, this is true. All of the gifts are from an earlier stage of their development.”

  Alander turned again to the vessel before him, wondering at the technologies the Spinners must have achieved, trying to imagine the kind of craft they traveled in. Were they bigger? Faster? What? The mind boggled at the possibilities. And maybe that was just it: His mind, like those of all humans, virtual or otherwise, was not ready for the technology the Spinners possessed. Christ, they were barely able to grasp the few things they had been given already, so what chance did they have of grasping an even higher technology? That’s why they had been thrown scraps. It was all they could deal with right now.

  Thinking that he might get a hint of how the thing worked, Alander asked, “So why is it called a hole ship?”

  “That is simply its name, Peter,” the Gifts replied. “Why were wheeled automobiles from your home planet cars?”

  He laughed at this. “I have no idea,” he admitted. “But I imagine it has some origin in Latin.”

  “Indeed,” the Gifts went on. “And the word from which hole ship has been translated would have also had its origins in one of the Spinners’ own ancient languages. So to attempt to explain it to you now would be futile.”

  Alander shrugged. “No harm in asking,” he said. Then: “I take it you’ll be showing me how to fly this contraption?”

  “Once the hole ship has departed the spindle, all communication between us will cease.”

  “What? But how am—?”

  “Don’t worry, Peter,” the Gifts interrupted. “There is an AI on board that will instruct you in all operations of the craft. We shall speak again on your return.”

  He didn’t feel reassured but nodded anyway. “Assuming I get back,” he mumbled to himself.

  A section of the gantry a third of the way around the massive chamber glowed gold.

  “I presume that’s where I’m supposed to go?” He felt nervous.

  “Yes, Peter. The hole ship will be ready for you by the time you arrive.”

  As he walked, he noticed a section of the gantry bulge out toward the hole ship. At the same time, the rotation of the black sphere began to slow.

  “We’re getting some weird readings,” Sivio announced.

  “I can’t feel anything.” Wyra, teleoperating the droid via conSense, clutched at Peter’s back, looking for all the world like a mechanical monkey crossed with a sea anemone. The droid’s sensors waved constantly, tasting the environment dozens of ways at once.

  “Peter?” Samson’s voice came loud and clear through the conSense link. Alander sensed an edge of fatigue or strain in it that surprised him. Concern for him? She had been distant since the episode with the communicator, so maybe she had other things on her mind. Part of him wondered if she was losing interest now that he wasn’t playing so hard to get.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring everything else going on around him. He wondered if doing this qualified him as one of Lucia’s tourists, exploring the stars simply to find nice things to look at, rather than questing for knowledge. He doubted he would learn terribly much on his little jaunt, regardless of what might happen.

  When he reached the golden segment of the gantry, it had extended a tongue into clear space. The hole ship continued to rotate bare decimeters from its edge. As Alander approached, it slowed even more and gently tugged at him with its odd radiation. By the time he reached the end of the tongue, the black sphere had come to a complete halt directly in front of him.

  He stared at it for a long moment. Although smaller than its parent, it still loomed over him. Its surface was unbelievably black: smooth and unbroken and yet casting no reflection back at him. It was so featureless that his gaze skated over it, lending the illusion that the entire thing was spinning like a top.

  It therefore came as something as a shock when a dimple appeared on the side facing him, expanding rapidly into a hole large enough for him to step through.

  “This is where I get in, I take it?” he said, peering into the absolute darkness of the interior.

  “You will be perfectly safe, Peter,” said the Gifts.

  “Ah, that old one.” He stepped nervously over the gap between gantry and hole ship, avoiding the stomach-dropping view down the bottom of the chamber. His feet found purchase on something hard and unyielding, while his outstretched hands touched walls that felt vaguely ceramic. It was still dark inside, though, so he kept his movements slow and cautious.

  The hole behind him irised shut, and he froze. Before total darkness fell completely, a light appeared ahead, seeming to emanate from some distance away. The droid clutching his back shifted position slightly to look in the new direction.

  He performed a brief mental calculation. The black sphere was ten meters across. He had taken maybe a step or two into the hole ship. The source of the light looked distant, tens of meters away, maybe more. Further illusions? Another example of the Spinners’ space-bending tricks?

  “You’ve started moving again,” said Sivio. “Reception is a little hazy.”

  Although conSense provided him with a brief and unnerving glimpse of the black sphere rotating as before, he could detect no actual sensation of motion from within.

  After a second, the lights came on properly inside the black sphere. He found himself standing in an unadorned, round room the same color as the sphere’s exterior. It was eight meters across and three high; the walls bent slightly inward at their highest and lowest edges, following the curve of the outer hull. There was nowhere to sit, nothing to look at, and no visible means of controlling the hole ship.

  “All you need to do is ask for what you require,” said a voice, as though reading his thoughts.

  “How about a chair, for starters?” he said.

  The floor extruded a semicircular couch in the middle of the room. He eased himself carefully onto it and, despite his apprehensions, found it to be extremely comfortable.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Can you give me a view of the outside?”

  Instantly, the walls became transparent, revealing a giddying view of the white ball fixed in front of him, opposite the segment of hull through which he had entered, and the Dry Dock spinning smoothly around him. He was instantly disoriented.

  “Smaller!” he called out quickly. “Make the view smaller!”

  The view obligingly shrank back to one section of the wall, only a couple of meters across.

  “Thank you,” he said more calmly. He watched the view silently for a couple of minutes before asking, “So what happens now?”

  “You need to give me a destination,” the voice replied simply.

  “And you are... ?”

  “I am the mind of the hole ship, of course.”

  Alander frowned. The alien AI spoke in a tone similar to the Gifts but was less conversational.

  “I thought we’d leave the Dry Dock first,” he said.

  “That won’t be necessary. Give me your destination, and 1 will take you there.”

  He shrugged. “Very well, then. Take me...” He clutched for a destination at random. “Take me to this system’s fifth planet.”

  “The one you call UA-5?”

  “Yes but, really, any one of them will do. I just want to see if this thing will work.”

  “It will, Peter,” said the hole ship. “Please relax. We will be there in a moment.”

  The two statements back to back were an unreasonable expectation, he thought. “Are you still getting this, Jayme?”

  “You’re still coming through, although reception still isn’t perfect.”

  “Otto?”

  The droid twitched on his back. “Present and accounted for,” he said.

  Alander watched the screen before him as much as he dared, while stealing glimpses at the conSense feed at the same time. The black sphere was slowing again, its orbit appeari
ng to contract.

  “You getting any readings, Jayme?”

  “None that make any sense,” he said. “But that’s hardly surprising.”

  “I can’t wait to take a closer look at the data,” said Wyra excitedly. “A ship that spins when it’s not even going anywhere? Seems a little strange, unless the rotation helps it maintain some sort of stable state. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when it comes to a halt again.”

  They didn’t have long to wait. As the black sphere drew closer to the central white sphere, its rate of rotation grew steadily slower. When it was at rest, the two spheres were almost touching. Alander watched with trepidation and fascination as the two spheres finally did touch, then began to overlap.

  “Now that is bizarre,” said Sivio. “Are you feeling anything, Peter? Otto?”

  “Not a thing.” Alander was frozen in his seat as the surface of the white sphere swept gradually up the screen and, via conSense, he watched as it began to engulf its smaller counterpart. Engulfing him, inside.

  “The boundary layer is just passing you now,” Sivio went on. “Any second—”

  The transmission to the Tipler ended abruptly. At the same time, the droid clinging to Alander suddenly died. It went limp and fell from his shoulder. Automatic subroutines snatched at the couch as it fell, and then it was still.

  “Jayme? Otto? Can you hear me?”

  He was about to ask the hole ship what was going on when the walls suddenly cleared again, revealing the inside of the Dry Dock, this time from the point of view of the white sphere. He had barely a second to register it when, just as suddenly, it was gone and the screen went blank.

  He stood up, the beginnings of panic in his gut. The only light came from the edges of the screen, where a faint greenish glow flickered. As little as it was, he was grateful for it; it gave him something to orient himself by. There was still no sense of motion, however, although he suspected that the hole ship was in fact moving in ways he would never fathom.

  “When—?”

  He didn’t finish the sentence. No sooner had the first word escaped his mouth when the question became irrelevant.

  The blackness of the screen was abruptly swept away, revealing a vibrantly colored gas giant with equally bright rings. He recognized the planet from the system data; it was definitely the one he had requested. But he had never seen it like this before.

  “Amazing,” he breathed. He walked closer to the screen and touched it. There were no pixels. But for the resistance meeting his fingers, he would have suspected there was no screen there at all, but a hole opening directly into the vacuum.

  He looked back at the couch. The droid was still inert, and would be until control signals arrived from the Tipler. The problem was that, as he appeared to have traveled faster than light to his destination, it would take an hour for those signals to arrive.

  For a brief moment, he was completely alone, far more isolated than he had ever been on the surface of Adrasteia. It was a disturbing feeling, and he wondered if this was how Lucia had felt on her solo journey between the stars. Standing in absolute silence, staring out at the gas giant, he couldn’t shake the notion that it would have been a terribly lonely way to die.

  “Can I send an ftl message to the Tipler?” he asked, wanting desperately to lose the unsettling thought.

  “Of course,” came the immediate reply from the hole ship.

  “How do I do it?”

  “Simply tell me the message you wish to send, and I shall transmit it.”

  His mind was blank for a second. Then: “Okay, send this message: ‘How does forever begin?’ Send it via normal means as well, so they can compare timing and confirm the source.”

  The hole ship vibrated around him like a bell for a moment, although soundlessly. “The message has been sent.”

  “And we’re equipped to receive a reply, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s wait a bit and see what happens.”

  He went back to the couch and, removing the droid and placing it on the floor, sat down. The view was unchanged and far more beautiful than anything he had ever allowed himself to imagine. If the Gifts were as good as their word, he could take the hole ship anywhere, see any number of other amazing sights. If Hatzis would let him, that is.

  “Is it possible to move any closer?” he asked.

  “Please specify how close you would like to be taken.”

  “No, I don’t want to get closer yet, I was just wondering if you could get closer.”

  “I have the ability to take you as close as you wish to the planet, Peter.”

  “But how? I mean, the Spinners are giving us a faster-than-light drive; does some sort of reactionless thruster come with it?”

  “I possess only the one means of crossing space.”

  “That jump thing?” He thought the answer a little strange but not impossible to work around. The hole ship would need to change its velocity and direction every time it jumped somewhere new, but it could always do that by jumping into and out of nearby gravity wells until the resulting acceleration gave it the vector it needed. So one jump, he supposed, might actually be several in a rapid series.

  “Is there a limit to how often we can use it?”

  “Energy expenditure increases exponentially. The closest to the hole ship’s maximum range you take it, the longer it will take to recharge. However, it can recharge itself fully in less than one of your days and make any number of small jumps in quick succession.”

  He nodded. Impressive and fascinating. “What about weapons? Are you armed?”

  “No. I have no offensive or defensive capability.”

  He was about to ask why not—although he figured he could guess the answer—when the droid, still lying on the floor at his feet, suddenly stirred like a sleepy dog and sat upright.

  “Signal received,” it said in a gender-neutral voice, “from asteroid probe 14C: ‘Don’t forget where you are, Peter.’ “ The voice changed to that of Caryl Hatzis; clearly a recording. “ ‘Call us if you haven’t already.’ “

  Alander flushed and didn’t say anything in response. Any pride he had felt at surviving the test flight so far evaporated. Hatzis still didn’t trust him, despite his recent track record. Maybe he could understand her reasoning, but did she have to rub his face in it all the time?

  “No signal from the Tipler?” he asked.

  “We are receiving something now.” Sure enough, a faint vibration thrilled through the floor beneath him. When it had ceased, Hatzis’s voice once more sounded in the hole ship.

  “Message received. Well done, Peter. Now come back, and we’ll review the data.”

  He was tempted to send a reply telling her he’d go where he damn well pleased, but he bit his tongue.

  “Tell them we heard them loud and clear in return,” he said. “Then take us back as instructed.”

  He took a long look at the ringed gas giant, doing his best to memorize it. This was something his original had never seen. This was his memory and would be forever.

  Then the screen went black again, and he was gone.

  1.2.3

  After watching the recording of the hole ship disappear for the tenth time, Hatzis still couldn’t work out how it happened. First the black sphere slid inside the larger sphere, leaving no mark that it had ever existed on the smooth, white surface. Then the white sphere shrank in size, giving the impression that it was going farther away; sensors confirmed, however, that it was in fact only getting smaller. It halved in volume in a handful of seconds and kept shrinking. Part of her still expected it to stop when it was the same size as the black sphere, but it didn’t even slow. Fifteen seconds after the black sphere had been swallowed, the white one had disappeared altogether, leaving nothing behind but heat-dazzled sensors and a faint ripple in the local structure of space-time.

  “My guess is it moved into a dimension other than the usual three,” said Wyra, his voice still a little stunned by what
had happened. “Which would means it’s some sort of a hypersphere, as opposed to an ordinary sphere.”

  “Can you test that?”

  “Not without attaching something to it. Even a rope would be interesting.”

  “It’s a shame the droid didn’t work, then,” she said. “If we could communicate with it—”

  “Caryl,” interrupted Nalini Kovistra, “we have a message from Peter.”

  “Good. What does it say?”

  Kovistra shrugged and shook her head. “It doesn’t seem to make any sense,” she said. “It says, ‘How does forever begin?’ “

  Hatzis smiled, recalling the conversation she and Alander had shared during preflight training. It referred to their coming lives as engrams, and the laborious training they had to go through leading up to the launch of the survey missions.

  “Slowly,” she mumbled to herself. “Very slowly.”

  “What was that?” said Kovistra.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Hatzis. “Just a private joke from way back. Tell me, did the message come through ftl?”

  “Yes. No mistaking it. The ring antenna resonated as before, only this time the wave form had all the characteristics of one of our vocal transmissions.”

  “So why couldn’t we understand that other message, then?”

  “Maybe it really was just a garbled echo of some kind.”

  “Or maybe it came from someone else,” put in Sivio.

  That thought kept her quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “Nalini, tell Peter well done and to come back. If he picks that up, then we’ll know the antenna works both ways.”

  A moment later, his response returned that he had heard them loud and clear.

  “So it worked.” Cleo Samson was instantly in her face, following her around the Tipler’s virtual bridge as she checked reports.

  Something about Samson’s delivery unnerved her, more than her usual persistence. “What’s on your mind, Cleo?”

  “We know we can contact Earth. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Theoretically we can, yes. And yes, it would be a good thing. We’re supposed to inform Earth as a matter of urgency if we find evidence of ETs. But we tried to hail them on the ftl communicator, and they didn’t reply, and there’s still nothing coming through on normal channels, which is not a positive sign. Either they haven’t heard us or they—”