Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Okay,” said Sulich. “We have resource estimates, completion dates, media releases, policy guidelines... no damage rates or shortfalls... no error calculations... no contingency plans... We have final design tolerances, but I don’t know what good they’re going to do us. Anyone could work them out.”

  Hatzis stood up and dusted herself down. She was still patched into the simulation she and Sulich had prepared for Shalhoub: a bright green projection of what the Frame would look like in thirty years, with the Shell Proper stretched over it like a sail. This image would have been enough to trigger the download of more information from his wider self into the remote. That’s when they had Scotched him, when the information was in his head and ripe for the plucking. Or so they’d hoped.

  “That’s it? Nothing any more sensational than that?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. He was smarter than we gave him credit for; either that or he was simply thinking about something else. There is a lot of other stuff in here... Sulich’s voice faded as she sifted through more of the dead remote’s memory. To her, Hatzis knew, this sort of work was a game, albeit one to be taken very seriously. She had no body or reputation to lose. She wouldn’t be dogged by well-wishing types on both sides of the divide wanting to know what she was up to. Matilda Sulich was one of the last truly independent activists in the system, and notorious for it, which is why she and Hatzis worked so well together.

  Chaos and control. Hatzis had programmed her dress with that theme in mind before coming to the party. Whether the venue, which had allowed her the use of the study for the evening, had suspected or would even care after the fact, she didn’t know.

  “I’m going out to mingle,” she said. “People will be starting to wonder what’s going on.”

  “You plan to tell them?”

  “Of course. We’d be hypocrites, otherwise.”

  Sulich chuckled. “If I find anything more sensational, I’ll let you know.”

  * * *

  The party was beginning to peak when she slipped out of the study and poured herself a drink. Someone had resurrected an old 3-D Dean Martin simulation. It was warbling something about memories as she went out onto the balcony.

  JORIS, still female and holding court under a swaying palm tree silhouetted against a simulated orange sunset, raised an eyebrow when she stepped out into the night air.

  “I hear you’ve been busy, Caryl.”

  Hatzis shrugged and halfheartedly toasted the merge’s observance. “I’m not going to deny you the pleasure of confirming what you’ll know soon enough, so... yes. We cracked Sel Shalhoub.”

  “And here I was thinking you were after me.” The merge smiled. “Matilda is aiming high, this time.”

  That stung. She opened her mouth to protest that it wasn’t entirely Sulich’s plan; that she, Hatzis, had been part of the conspiracy, too. But she reined in her emotions. Sulich provided the notoriety and expertise that made their work together successful, even if only to a small degree so far; without her, Hatzis would have gotten nowhere, so it seemed churlish to argue about it in public. And that was, probably, what JORIS was trying to provoke.

  “No secrets,” she said with a brief smile.

  “Ah, yes, the slogan. And what did you learn this time?”

  “We’ll let you know.”

  “No doubt.”

  She joined another group, where a narrative designer by the name of Lancia Newark was holding court. The ND was unique in the sense that she had two remotes at the party; having stated publicly that conversation was getting progressively more boring the older she became, she had to back it up by keeping herself company wherever she went. But then, Hatzis reminded herself, everyone was unique in some way or another, these days. They might lump themselves in with the Vincula or the Gezim or go it alone as Hatzis and Sulich preferred, but in the end, all those who had survived the Spike were following their own muse. All were free to do what they wished, virtually or in reality. This didn’t necessarily mean that people would not act in concert when they desired to; the Shell Proper was the greatest evidence thus far that emergent properties such as cooperation and common vision could exist in this new scheme, and not even Hatzis could argue with that. Still, the great irony—that the Vincula was humanity’s greatest achievement as much as it threatened to become its ultimate downfall—haunted Hatzis in all her povs. Freedom always carried a price, and sometimes she felt that of the 3,472,803 individual humans still legally living in Sol System, she alone was concerned about when and how that price would have to be repaid.

  The Newark stunt held her attention for a while, and she was relieved not to have to endure examination from JORIS or any other inquisitive mind, for that matter. The sad thing was that most people wouldn’t genuinely care if she had cracked Shalhoub’s remote, or even if the Vincula had a thousand secrets they were keeping from the rest of humanity. That was her particular uniqueness and her lasting regret.

  “I’ve found something interesting,” said Sulich into her head. “There’s been another Discord.”

  “What’s that, Mati?”

  “In McKirdy’s Machine. Another signal. This time they’re sure it’s a transmission. They’ve got it under wraps for the moment while they translate it.”

  She frowned. “I thought they couldn’t—”

  “The first time the Machine wasn’t tuned the right way. So they adjusted it in case another one came through. And it did, barely two hours ago.”

  Hatzis wandered away from the gathering so she could think more clearly. She felt the rest of herself gathering around her angels’ wings. “Maybe this was what Sel was thinking about,” she said, remembering the conversation she had shared with him earlier. Perhaps it hadn’t been idle chitchat after all.

  “It seems likely,” said Sulich. “There are links to other sources. Some of them are still open. Very sloppy.” She sounded almost displeased that the Vincula security wasn’t tighter, and Hatzis found herself silently concurring with the sentiment. There was nothing worse than a careless opponent—except, perhaps, no opponent at all. “They don’t know where this transmission came from, either, but it doesn’t appear to be directional. Whoever it came from, they’re spraying the sky with it.”

  That sounded like a beacon more than anything else. “Is it closer? Farther away?”

  “It’s stronger, which suggests that it might be closer. No one knows at this point.”

  Hatzis imagined an alien ship broadcasting for help, drifting out of control toward Sol. Part of her was excited by the thought; another part was terrified. What could the Vincula do if anything massive, traveling at relativistic speeds, were to strike the Frame? The shock wave would be enough to tear the structure apart, along with the Shell Proper. Decades of hard work could be unraveled in an instant. Whether she agreed with its existence or not, it would still be a shame.

  But the implications of the discovery weren’t her immediate concerns. The information itself was the priority.

  “What can we do with it?” she asked.

  “I’m circulating it as we speak.” Sulich sounded distracted, a rare thing, since she hardly ever approached her processing capacity, even with all her povs. No doubt she was opening thousands of communication channels, talking simultaneously to as many people as possible. “This is a live one, Caryl. They won’t be able to plug it up in time, so I expect them to take the wraps off at any moment now.”

  “They probably would have anyway,” said Hatzis.

  “Don’t be so sure. These days, two hours is a long time to keep anything new a secret, so they must’ve been trying hard. I think they would’ve kept it that way until someone noticed what they were doing—which we did. And that’s good enough for me.”

  Success? Hatzis glanced back at JORIS and the Newarks and toasted the illusory moon with a glass of champagne. Success at this stage of her life would be welcome indeed. She had been looking for direction since the novelty of passing her one hundredth birthday had turned into
irrational dread of her looming one hundred fiftieth; not even the promise of immortality could take the sting out of getting older.

  But the champagne tasted bitter as it went down, and she knew she was probably kidding herself. Wherever this led, she doubted it would be to her advantage. There were too many higher forces at play. The original Caryl Hatzis was under no illusion that to the Vincula as a whole, their work constituted little more than a nuisance. Hardly the sort of thing one would be pleased to put on a CV... or a headstone, for that matter.

  2.1.2

  “You knew him, I think,” said Laurie Jetz in a solemn voice.

  The greater Hatzis didn’t reply immediately. Her mind trawled through her various povs for an extended moment while she considered her options. She could answer honestly and confirm the Urge’s statement, or she could lie and claim that the old records must have been corrupted. Or she could tell a half truth and say that his information might be right, but she had erased that aspect of her life from her memory. She would have said the last immediately, except her original had as good as stated the opposite at that damned party. Shalhoub had heard her. She had, therefore, inadvertently backed herself into a corner.

  But she had no time for vacillating. She had to decide—and quickly. Shit.

  “Yes, I knew him,” she said, choosing honesty over hypocrisy. “We entrained together for UNESSPRO. I think we were even rostered together on several of the missions.”

  “Quite a few, according to the records. Four hundred seventeen out of the original thousand, in fact. You were on the Barnard’s Star flyby together, the first survey mission to send back data. What was it called? The Marcus Chown?”

  “Michio Kaku,” she corrected him. There seemed no point holding anything back now.

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Jetz. “And tell me, Caryl, in your opinion, did he have what it would take to do something like this?”

  The question shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. “I honestly don’t know, Laurie. It was a long time ago.”

  “But your memories are still fresh, are they not?” He went on without giving her the chance to refute this: “I know you, Caryl.”

  The hell you do, she thought. He might have known what she had been but certainly not what she was now. No one knew anyone anymore. They had progressed beyond all capacity to be understood. That was part of the problem.

  “I knew his original,” she said, keeping a tight rein on her resentment. “Who can say what has happened to him since then?”

  “We know his engram failed on the Kaku mission. Your engram reported that much in her transmission from Barnard’s Star. There were short-term failures of several different engrams in other missions, but his name recurs more than anyone else’s.”

  Hatzis found herself looking at him with both amazement and amusement. “And you believe that is somehow connected to this?” She indicated the image he had presented to her only minutes earlier. “I hardly think so. The whole madness/genius argument is just bullshit. Especially here. Christ, he wasn’t even a real person; he was just a program. And when programs fail, they don’t go off and write a fucking symphony or anything. They just... fail. Crediting him with the discovery of something like ftl communication—let alone ftl travel—is clutching a bit, Laurie.”

  Jetz’s image shuffled uncomfortably, as if embarrassed. “Yes, well, I guess I’d have to agree with you there,” he said. “But goddamn it, Caryl, we’re faced with few alternatives. And the Vincula would very much like to know what it is we’re dealing with before we respond. We don’t want to reveal too much.”

  “Why not?” Here she and her original were literally of the same mind. “What is it you’re so afraid of?”

  “If we knew the answer to that, Caryl, maybe we wouldn’t be so afraid. But the truth is, the unknown can be terribly intimidating.”

  Hatzis fumed silently to herself for a moment. The strength of the Vincula lay in its flexibility, its ability to respond to change far more rapidly than any other human government had before. But its weakness lay in its obsessive and transitive factionalism, which undermined much-needed stability at every step. And, like every government before it, it was obsessed with secrecy, knowing full well that, today as always, information was the key to power.

  This time, though, they had come to her with information. She suspected they would have done so regardless of her original’s interference. She had known Peter Alander, unlike any of them, and that gave her a kind of edge. Exactly what sort of edge, though, remained to be seen.

  “Do you want me to talk to him?” she asked. “Is that it?”

  “Yes, Caryl.” He seemed relieved that she had brought it up first—an artifice, surely, since the appearance of his image was certainly under complete conscious control. “Who better to respond than someone he once knew?”

  “We didn’t know each other that well, Laurie. In fact...” She remembered the friction that had existed between them. “We weren’t what you’d call friends.”

  “But he knew you, and that’s the most important thing. After all, what else is he going to find familiar?”

  “Nothing, I guess.” She sighed, thinking, Not even me. But she gave in, anyway. Perhaps the Urges would feel in her debt once this was out of the way; she could always use the extra leverage. “So what is it you’d like me to say?”

  “We just want you to find out what he wants, that’s all.”

  The brief was surprisingly short. “And where he’s from and why he’s here, I suppose?”

  “Those things are secondary,” he said. “I don’t think we’d believe his answers on those matters, anyway, regardless of what he told us. If he wants something from us, though, that’s a different story.”

  Once she, like her original, would have thought Jetz’s Vincula-centric view of the universe alarming and reason enough to deny him anything he asked. Now she was deadened to it. They all thought that way, each and every one of the Urges. Their job was to look out for number one, and they did it obsessively. Her only hope was to give up trying to beat them head-on, which was something her original would never understand.

  “When?” she asked.

  “Now, if you like. Now that he’s using normal means, we can open communications at any time.”

  “Live?”

  “No. There will be an appreciable delay between responses, so we will record your message and broadcast it immediately. If necessary, you will be called up for further exchanges with him.”

  She could see this stretching for days, slumming in real time to communicate with a poor copy of a man she’d never liked in the first place. “Okay,” she said. “But first, play back the message to me again. Remind me of what I’m replying to.”

  Jetz complied with no visible effort.

  “This is Peter Stanmore Alander hailing any surviving representatives of the 2050 United Near-Earth Stellar Survey Program. I have urgent and sensitive information to convey, and I will do so only to the appropriate authorities. I shall await your reply at this location for precisely one hour. Should I receive no response, I will move to the coordinates at the end of this message and try again.”

  The audio recording ceased. There had been no accompanying image.

  “That was the first message,” Jetz explained. “The second was much the same, from the location he listed.”

  “And you’re absolutely sure it’s him?” she asked.

  “It’s a rough match to the vocal records of his original, for what that’s worth, but we need confirmation,” he said. “Now, when we send your message, it will go to a third location, since he will have moved again. Quite a clever trick, actually. He lets us know where he is and then tells us precisely where he’s going—not in time for us to get anything there to intercept him, of course, but so we can see how he travels. The gesture is quite cruel.” He smiled in appreciation.

  Hatzis recalled the footage Jetz had shown him. Alander was near enough to Earth that they could see him, albeit f
uzzily. The white dot that was his craft had demonstrated a knack for crossing distances, not instantaneously, but certainly much faster than light. This made him doubly difficult to catch. He could be right on top of someone well before they even saw him move.

  “Do you want me to talk him in?” she said, adding to herself, Into your clutches?

  “No, that’s not a priority at the moment. Just get him talking for now, then we’ll see what happens.”

  The answer sounded a bit pat, as if he was telling her what she wanted to hear, but ultimately she didn’t care. Alander was a stranger from a century ago. Their originals hadn’t kept in touch after entrainment; she didn’t know what had happened to him during the Spike. She didn’t particularly care if the Vincula even shot him out of the sky, except she would never know, then, where he had come by his ship. And she couldn’t deny that her curiosity in regards to this was most definitely piqued.

  “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

  She opened new channels of communication and felt them mesh with those of the Vincula observers attending her and Jetz. Her mind raced as she tried to think of something to say and ultimately settled on the practical.

  “Peter, this is Caryl Hatzis. We’ve picked up your beacon, but we don’t know what you want us to do beyond that. You’re going to have to give us a clue as to what you’d like us to do. Please, try not to be alarmed by what you see here.” She added that on impulse, trying to imagine what he might think upon seeing the Frame for the first time. “A lot has happened since you’ve been gone, Peter. But essentially we’re still the same old people.” More or less literally, in my case, she thought.

  She indicated that she had finished, and the recording ended.

  “Thank you, Caryl,” said Jetz. “Brief, to the point, reassuring: just what we wanted. The message has already been sent, and we will notify you once we have received his reply.”