Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “We don’t need a star drive,” Shalhoub sneered, as if the very idea offended him.

  “We need it more than you’re prepared to acknowledge, Sel. At the very least, we can use it to verify the truth of their other claims. If there are more such gifts waiting for us in Upsilon Aquarius, it can only be in our best interest to obtain them.”

  “Can it? You know what unchecked development can do. You’ve seen it yourself. Do you really want another Spike? Because that’s what we’ll get if we don’t consider the ramifications—”

  “We can consider as long as we like, but ultimately we have to take some sort of action. Attacking the hole ship was a tactic of inspired stupidity. If you don’t stop this madness soon, then we’ll lose the opportunity that is before us.”

  “Your argument is confused and ill founded.”

  “And your resistance to change is irrational,” she said. “It doesn’t do anybody any good.”

  “Your willful vandalism will do nothing to further your cause nor deflect us from ours!”

  “And your stubborn refusal to acknowledge your boundaries forces us to tear them down in order to make you see beyond them!”

  “Rhetoric!” Shalhoub snapped.

  Ertl was unfazed. “If your best response is insults, then I suspect we’ve already won the war. The Vincula is only as strong as the people it links together. Without them, it is nothing. And neither are you. I suggest you Urges look long and hard at what you’re doing, and why, before the ability to decide is taken away from you altogether.”

  With that, the Gezim severed communication. The damage had spread to 5 percent of the Frame and was still spreading, despite the Vincula’s efforts to contain it. The Gezim changed tactics, growing delicate-looking, fan-shaped plex across the gaps between tumbling fragments. Some of the fans were already kilometers long, trailing behind their anchor points like cat-o’-nine-tails. Hatzis guessed what they were for before the first of the Vincula effectors brushed against one: They were conductors moving through the sun’s magnetic field, gradually building up charge until they touched something their accumulated potential could be released into. The space over and ahead of the Gezim wound lit up as dozens of short-lived flashes announced the expiration of the tugs, the combination of the fans and their fuel reserves turning them into flying bombs.

  She watched the escalating conflict with a mix of resignation and melancholy. This might have been avoided, she reminded herself. If only Alander hadn’t come back with his promise of gifts to exacerbate the fight between the two cultures, things might never have reached flash point.

  “I guess now we’ll never know,” she muttered to herself, watching another string of brief flashes arc silently in the dark.

  2.1.7

  They had barely arrived back at the Frame when everything fell apart. Alander heard a strange screeching in his ears, felt it in his skin, while his mind seemed to lose its sense of balance. He dropped to one knee, clutching his head.

  When the sound had gone and his head had cleared, he opened his eyes. Hatzis was standing in the middle of the cockpit, her hands hanging limply at her sides, her face pale.

  “They used me,” she said, softly at first but growing louder in accordance with her anger. “They fucking used me!”

  He grabbed at the couch and levered himself to his feet, then continued to hold on to it to steady himself as the world rocked beneath him. It felt as though he was on a boat in a violent storm.

  “Caryl, what’s going on?”

  She ignored the question. “I’ve been cut off again. Are we moving?”

  He looked at the screen. It showed the familiar view of the balcony on which he and Hatzis’s original had first met. “Arachne, what’s happening?”

  “We are under attack,” it replied calmly. “There have been several attempts to infiltrate the security of this vessel.”

  “Physical attempts?” he asked, dreading the sort of weapons the Vincula could dream up to crack it open.

  “No, although there have been physical methods employed. The main assault has been concentrated on me.”

  The Vincula was attacking the ship? Why would they do something like that? It didn’t make sense!

  He looked again at Hatzis. Her color had returned slightly, but she still appeared angry.

  The world was still moving for him. He fought the vertigo, tried to concentrate.

  “Tell me what’s going on, Caryl. Now.”

  Her expression was defiant. “Can’t you work it out?”

  “Let’s just assume I can’t, okay?” When she still hesitated, he said, “Are we still under attack, Arachne?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right, then take us out of here. A long way away—somewhere they won’t be able to find us in a hurry.”

  “Would this location suffice?” the AI asked.

  A map of the solar system appeared on the screen. The hole ship indicated a point high above the ecliptic, well away from the Frame and any other Vincula artifact.

  “That’ll do.” As always, he felt no sensation of movement, Only when the screen cleared, revealing a view of the sun as a distant bright star, did he know that they’d arrived.

  Hatzis stared at the screen, fairly quivering with repressed frustration and rage. Alander paced the cockpit, filled with apprehension so thick it was choking. Why would they attack the ship? He kept turning the question over and over in his head. It seemed completely irrational.

  And why hadn’t the Tipler answered him yet? What the hell was going on in Upsilon Aquarius?

  “You said they used you,” he said. “Were they trying to break in here?”

  “Of course.” This without turning from the screen.

  “To steal the data?”

  She cast him a contemptuous look. “Why would they need to do that? You were going to give it to them anyway.”

  “Then help me out here, Caryl. Please. I need to understand.” He stopped pacing and slumped onto the couch. “You helped me before, remember? You warned me not to leave the ship.”

  Hatzis’s expression softened a little, although her posture remained stiff. “Perhaps it was a mistake to warn you,” she said. “They knew the moment we arrived. It forced their hand.”

  He nodded, hating to think what might have happened had the Vincula given him time to actually step out of the ship. If he’d innocently wandered out into the maelstrom, could the ship or the Immortality Suit have protected him then? He doubted it.

  “Why did they attack us?” he asked again.

  “To gain control of the ship. And the situation.”

  “But why?”

  “They panicked. They could feel things slipping.” There was a new light in her eyes; much of her anger had left her now. “If they couldn’t keep knowledge of your existence secret, then they wanted to at least be able to... to keep you to themselves,” she finished awkwardly.

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “You alone can talk to the Gifts, Peter.”

  He stared at her, apprehension again rising inside of him. He hadn’t mentioned anything about how the Gifts had chosen him. He had been saving it for later, when he’d handed over the SSDS units.

  “How do you know that?” he said.

  “We uploaded your memories the moment you arrived,” she said matter-of-factly. “As soon as you stepped out of the hole ship, we knew everything you did about this ship, as well as the gifts.”

  He could feel his face turning red. Even though he had suspected, the knowledge still came as a shock. “So why did you just let me sit there wasting my time explaining everything? Why the charade?”

  “We felt it better that you didn’t know. My higher self thought we could learn from talking to you, as well as earning your trust before you gave us the rest of the data. That, in hard storage, we could not access. It was not part of the original plan to force you to give it to us, although we could have, had we wanted to.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If w
e had attacked more subtly, taken you over and used you like a puppet to talk to the Gifts...” She shrugged. “Maybe they wouldn’t have noticed.”

  He stared at her, appalled by her nonchalance. “I thought everyone was supposed to be free in this Vincula thing?”

  “They are,” she said.

  “Then how do you justify this? Taking me over, attacking my ship—”

  “You’re a special case.” She raised her hands to ward off his immediate cry of hypocrisy. “I’m not saying I agree with them, Peter. I’m just telling you what their motives were. Besides...” She stopped, looking awkward.

  “What?”

  “Well, you don’t have the same rights as a member of the Vincula. You’re not truly... human.”

  “I’m not?”

  “Of course not. You’re an engram—and a damaged one, at that.”

  He turned away from her. He couldn’t believe the depths to which he had been lied to. When he thought of how ridiculous his concerns about privacy must have sounded to her—to all of them—he felt stupid. They had dismissed him as readily as they might toss out a shorted circuit. He felt betrayed, although that, he knew, was absurd. These people owed him nothing. To them, he was nothing.

  Was she in his mind now? He wondered. Rummaging around?

  Then another, more troubling thought: What if he really was nothing more than a poor copy?

  If not for us...

  “Arachne,” he croaked. “I want you to send my message to the Tipler again. Maybe... maybe they didn’t hear us the first time or something.”

  “Such an eventuality seems unlikely,” said the hole ship. “Nevertheless, the message shall be resent as per your request.”

  If the alien AI had heard a word that had passed between him and Hatzis, it gave no indication.

  He hung his head as the ship vibrated around them. Was this how Cleo Samson had felt when he had shut her down? No, she was acting under the direction of impulses beyond her control, orders that had been grafted forcibly into her, whether she wanted them or not. He was being himself, nothing more and nothing less. He did feel like a whole person, even if that person was occasionally unreliable. He was as human as Caryl Hatzis—as any of them—surely?

  “So why did you warn me?” he asked.

  Hatzis didn’t answer.

  “If I’m not human,” he repeated, louder this time, turning back to face her, “why did you warn me? Why not just let them take me and be done with it?”

  She didn’t flinch from his gaze. “To be honest, Peter, I sympathized with you. Not my greater self, but me, this part of her. I actually met my own engrams, a long time ago, and found them to be passable simulations. Their only failing was that they were created a hundred years ago by a technology that has long since been superseded. That’s not their fault. At the time, there simply was no alternative.”

  He didn’t know what his face was showing, but whatever it was, she reacted by looking away and adding, “Not all of the missions failed. Over the years, we regained contact with a few of the nearer ones. In order to obtain data, we will strike up a conversation, while it lasts, but beyond that...”

  She trailed off, and he let her. In order to obtain data... That’s all he had been to them: a means to an end, just as he had been for the Gifts, and then for the others on the Tipler. He was sick of it: sick of jumping at other people’s whims, sick of being pushed around, sick of being lied to, sick of feeling obligated just because he wasn’t as good as anyone else.

  He came to a decision. It was his own, made completely independently of anyone else, and he felt a warm satisfaction permeate through him when he said aloud, “Arachne, I want you to take us back to Upsilon Aquarius.”

  “What?” Hatzis looked alarmed as the hole ship responded in the affirmative. “Now?”

  He nodded. “Now.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re coming, too.”

  “But...” She looked around her as though seeking a way out.

  “It’s okay, Caryl. I’ll be coming back. I just need to see what’s wrong. And you can be a witness to what we find.”

  “Am I a hostage?” she asked coldly.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “Although eventually, I guess, I’ll need some means of talking to the Vincula again. You’ll be that link, just as you were before. I’m sure they’ll be more likely to believe you than they would me.

  She laughed at this. “I’m not highly regarded among the Urges, Peter. And the Gezim think I’m some sort of crank—except Matilda, perhaps. But I suspect she only helped me with Shalhoub as a stunt.”

  He didn’t know what she was talking about and was about to say so when she stopped suddenly, shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is awkward for me. I’m not used to operating as a discrete entity anymore.”

  “But you’re Caryl’s original.”

  “I’m a component of Caryl, Peter, a part of something much greater than you can ever imagine.” She glared at him. “How do you think you’d function if you were cut up into pieces?”

  He couldn’t imagine how it felt to her, but he was reluctant to spare much sympathy, being only a passable simulation, after all. The main screen showed nothing, which meant that they were under way. Approximately two days’ ship time would see them back in Upsilon Aquarius, a day after they’d left Earth. He wasn’t sure that turning around was an option, even if he’d wanted to.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” he said shortly, “I will be coming back. After all, we’re still going to need help dealing with the gifts. Short of finding another survey mission, Sol is our only option.”

  “I agree,” she said, surprising him. “But let’s just wait to see what we come back to before we start making any long-term plans, shall we? Believe me, a week can be a long time to the Vincula.”

  He thought back a week in his own life. Incredible though it seemed, less than two had passed since the Spinners had arrived on Adrasteia. Although he tried not to think ahead, as Hatzis had suggested, he couldn’t help but wonder what he might find on Adrasteia when he returned. It didn’t seem conceivable that the ftl antenna had malfunctioned, but it was a possibility. Maybe something had happened to the Tipler itself. Maybe Cleo Samson’s messing with the Engram Overseer had disturbed some delicate equilibrium, resulting in a catastrophic failure. Or perhaps she had somehow risen from the dead to carry out more of UNESSPRO’s orders

  He stopped that train of thought with a shake of his head. It was as pointless as arguing with Hatzis, who had turned away from him and was pacing the cockpit now. The circular chamber was looking a lot smaller with two people in it, and the prospect of spending two days cooped up with her suddenly hit home.

  “It’ll be a week for us,” he said. “Two days there and two days back. But it’ll be less for everyone else. Those two days in transit equate to just one—”

  “—in the real universe. I know.”

  He winced; he’d forgotten that her greater self had had access to everything his mind contained. “Do you need anything, then?” You also know that the ship can provide food, water, privacy—”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m comfortable for the moment.”

  He didn’t argue, although she looked anything but comfortable. She was still wearing the purple velvet gown, ridiculously formal under the circumstances. Her hands moved constantly, rubbing her upper arms as though she was cold, while the padding of her feet beat a rhythm in the stillness. Her eyes didn’t leave the floor as she paced, never once attempting to come up and meet his own.

  Shrugging, he left her to it. Moving up the short corridor that normally led to the exterior door but that now opened on the small room the Gifts had provided him for the Earthward leg of his journey, he decided that putting some space between them was the most important thing. She couldn’t damage anything, he reasoned, and the hole ship wasn’t about to listen to her, either. The ship was under his control
. There was only one thing left that he could do, and that was to wait.

  Closing the door to his cramped room, he proceeded to do exactly that.

  2.2

  PURIFICATION

  2.2.1

  Caryl Hatzis continued pacing the room, trying desperately to think clearly. Her mind felt like a hand that had lost its lingers—or, worse, a finger that had lost its hand. Truncated, fragile, dangerously weak, she was afraid it might fall apart at any moment, leaving her senseless.

  She hadn’t realized until now just how much of herself relied on the greater being that had surrounded her. So many of her thoughts began in her, migrated beyond, then returned at a later date. Emotions likewise: a feeling of happiness might begin halfway across the solar system, only to merge with regret or anger at different points as data spread at the speed of light, generating an entirely new feeling in the process. Her whole mind had been a landscape of textures in multidimensional space. Now she was just a point. Everything began and ended with her alone.

  She had always regarded herself as an individual, pricklier than her greater self and more likely to buck the trends. An outlier. But now she saw that it was an illusion. She had been an integral part of the whole, if the way she missed it was anything to go by.

  But how much did it miss her? How important to the whole Caryl Hatzis was she? It was impossible to tell. Maybe she didn’t miss her at all. It had shed plenty of povs before, after all. Maybe she had kept her original out of nothing more than sentimentality. Had it been too difficult to keep her alive or her attitude been too contrary to the others, might she then have been shut down decades ago?

  It took her an hour to recover from the argument with Alander. Irritation and frustration had built up in her to the point where she could barely respond to him, and she’d had nowhere to dump it. She had forgotten how to deal with emotions within herself and rapidly found herself hating the self-containment. The dissatisfaction similarly fed back upon itself, like a snake eating its own tail and somehow getting bigger in the process, until she felt certain that her brain would explode with unanswered thoughts.