Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Who, Caryl?” he asked urgently. “Who is doing it?”

  “I don’t know,” she moaned, still overwhelmed by the horror of what she had just experienced and knowing that the moment that screen came back to life, it would all start again. “I’ve never seen such—”

  Then she was immersed in it again.

  She screamed and fell away from Alander, the fire of emotion so powerful she felt her head might explode. The hole ship rolled beneath her as another burst of blue loomed on the screen. Whoever was attacking them, they seemed to be able to anticipate exactly where they jumping.

  Alander stood above her, shouting his rage at the screen while she writhed helplessly on the floor, clutching her head in agony. Fragments of her greater self were pouring into her from all directions with no sense of order, great gobbets of mind-flesh stuffed down her mental throat, choking her—

  Then it was gone again; the hole ship was jumping to a third place.

  “Please,” she sobbed. “Please make it stop.”

  Alander knelt on the floor beside her. “It’s okay, Caryl.”

  “Don’t go back,” she pleaded. “Please! I can’t take it.”

  “We have to, Caryl,” he said softly, apologetically. “We have to find out what’s going on.”

  The world swam around her as she tried to sit up; she fell back, gasping. “They’re dying,” she said. “That’s what’s happening. They’re dying, and there’s nothing—”

  This time she was silent as the paralyzing grief flooded through her. On the screen, there was no blue flash, just a sphere of oddly shaped silver vessels popping into existence around them: hundreds of them in a second, then thousands, closing in like a swarm of bees, their blue-tipped stingers at the ready.

  Then the screen went blank and they were gone.

  “Jesus Christ,” Alander whispered, leaning pale-faced against the couch. She watched him in a state of detached numbness. “What the hell is going on here, Caryl? Arachne?” He obviously had no intention of waiting to see if she had an answer for him. “Did you learn anything that time?”

  “I am cross-referencing what little data I have managed to obtain,” it replied. “I am hoping that doing so will help determine the origin of the species. So far, however, I have been unable to find a match.”

  “What about the Frame?” asked Alander. “Is it under attack?”

  “The artifact known as the Frame appears to be disintegrating.”

  Disintegrating, Hatzis echoed in her mind. Surely the Gezim couldn’t have done something like this. But if it wasn’t them, then who?

  “Can we contact whoever is responsible for this?” said Alander.

  “The only response so far to my hails has been a demonstration of force,” said the AI.

  “So we can assume, then, that communication isn’t one of their strengths,” said Alander. “Which leaves us completely in the dark. No clues, no ideas—”

  “No hope,” she cut in.

  He looked over to her briefly, then away again, as if embarrassed.

  “It is possible,” said the hole ship, “that any travel within the light cone of the attackers will be detected. I have therefore taken the liberty of moving us to a greater distance.”

  “So if you take us farther out than any light they’ve emitted has had time to travel, we’ll be safe?”

  “If I am correct, yes.”

  “But we’ll still be able to look back and see what has happened, right?”

  “When I reenter their light cone, yes. Provided I remain stationary, I should go undetected.”

  He nodded warily. “And how do you know just how far you have to jump? We don’t know how long they’ve been here.”

  “They weren’t here when I left,” explained the hole ship patiently. “I will jump to a point two light-days distant, then gradually come closer.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help those people back there?”

  “No,” Hatzis said dully. There was a finality to the memories she had received that spoke more clearly than anything else they had seen. “There isn’t.”

  “The hole ship possesses a basic defensive capability,” said the hole ship. “It could repel an attack of a technological level roughly equivalent to that of the human civilization existing in Sol System. The intruders I have encountered, however, are significantly more advanced. To attempt any form of counterassault against them would result in my destruction.”

  “But couldn’t we call for help with the ftl communicator? Maybe we could contact the Spinners themselves.”

  “I could try, but there is no way of knowing whether they would reply. They might no longer be in range.”

  “Or they might not be interested,” Hatzis put in.

  “There is also that possibility, yes,” said the hole ship.

  Hatzis had managed to sit up during the conversation and was facing the screen when it cleared. The hole ship appeared to have negotiated the light cone boundary, since they were obviously closer than two light-days from Sol. The images were blurred slightly by distance, even with the hole ship’s senses, but Hatzis could clearly make out the shape of the Frame as the view expanded. Everything looked perfectly normal, except for a number of blackened patches where the damage from the Gezim assault had yet to be repaired. The sight of it brought tears to her eyes.

  “At least we’re safe from this distance,” said Alander. “How far out are we?”

  “I am seven light-hours from Sol.”

  That put the hole ship somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. She could feel the fringes of her greater mind around her, but her nearest pov was the one on Titan, some hours away. She could try to warn all the isolated components of herself, those who were still outside the light cone of whoever had attacked the Frame, but what would be the point? If the heart of the Vincula itself could mount no resistance, what chance did a few remotes have?

  They could hide, she thought, bury themselves where they might not be noticed and regroup later, with as many others as they chose to warn. It was all that she could do, but it was better than nothing. Using the hole ship’s transmitters, and without Alander’s knowledge, she narrowcast a warning to as many of the povs she could locate, while she had the chance.

  The light cone spread indefatigably outward.

  “There.” Alander pointed. A scattering of blue pinpricks spread across the Frame. Yellow white flowers blossomed in their wake. “Can we get a clearer picture?”

  The view expanded. The yellow white flowers were explosions, spraying matter and energy in all directions and leaving massive holes in the Frame. The Shell Proper was already unraveling, the subtle tensions holding it in place causing whole sections to peel away and drift into the void. Quick-moving, silvery shapes darted in and out of view, maneuvering with all the ease and speed of sharks in fast motion. They reminded Hatzis of throwing stars, except that these had nine points and must have been kilometers across. The edges of each of these stars were spinning so fast that she suspected they were approaching the speed of light. And the faster the stars traveled, the faster the edges spun.

  They brought destruction wherever they went, raining down sheets of energy or silvery sprays. The Frame and its attendant vessels were trying to defend themselves, but their efforts were manifestly inadequate. Any attack they mounted was instantly torn to pieces. Lasers bounced off the silver ships; explosions were deflected as though they were little more than a stiff breeze; all forms of matter and energy were absorbed if they got anywhere close. Nothing the Vincula threw at them was even slowing them down.

  “Who are they?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

  Alander turned to look at her, as though he had forgotten she was there. “They’re definitely not yours?”

  She ignored what she regarded to be a stupid question. “Arachne, I find it hard to believe that you have no data on this species. I mean, look at them! Things like this don’t just appear out of nowhere.”

  “I ass
ure you, there is no information available on—”

  “It’s lying,” she said bluntly to Alander. “It has to be.”

  Alander frowned at the accusation, but it was the hole ship that responded. “I am not lying; what would it serve me to—?”

  “I don’t know,” she barked. “But it doesn’t make sense! All this fucking information on untold species, but not a scrap on... this!” She gestured irritably at the continuing battle on the screen, tears stinging her eyes.

  “I do not represent the sum of my builders’ knowledge,” said the AI, maintaining an almost supernatural calm in the face of the accusations she was throwing at it. “No more than the gifts were. There are gaps in my knowledge; this is clearly one of them. I can only reiterate that I have no information available on the vessels currently attacking Sol System.”

  Alander cleared his throat.

  “Perhaps we should be moving,” he said. “We’re in their light cone now.”

  “I am maintaining a low profile,” said the hole ship. “Unless I relocate, the chances are minimal that they will notice me.”

  Alander didn’t look terribly reassured, and Hatzis didn’t blame him. The attack on the Frame was intensifying, as it appeared on the screen. But it had actually happened seven and a half hours ago, during which time other such ships had presumably spread through the system, mopping up stations and remotes away from the Frame. They could have already strayed into the sights of one such ship. Another attack might only be seconds away.

  “This is what happened in Upsilon Aquarius,” Alander said. “It has to be. They wouldn’t have stood a chance against something like this.”

  Hatzis let out a small gasp as a piercing mental wail struck her from afar. Seven and a half hours before, key elements of her greater self had come under direct attack; their cry of alarm was only now reaching her, far away, and she found herself flinching at the intensity of the emotions.

  “Do you want us to block it out?” Alander asked, crouching next to her and putting a hand on her shoulder.

  She pushed him away. “No!” She took a deep breath and forced herself to react more calmly. “I’m sorry, but no, thank you. I just... I think I need to experience this. Otherwise it won’t seem real.”

  He nodded at the screen. “Seems real enough to me, Caryl.”

  She wanted to respond to his comment but couldn’t find the words to express the way she was feeling. After a while, he moved away, taking up his position on the couch. She closed her eyes on the tears that were seeping onto her cheeks, riding out the confusion and shock that rushed through her like a jet of boiling water at the sound of her greater self, dying.

  * * *

  They watched for eleven hours. Detected and attacked twice during that time, they relocated to points farther from the heart of the system to watch the destruction unfold. Each time, they had to relive the initial attacks, although the increasing distance degraded the detail of the images until, ultimately, there was no point watching anymore. Even then Hatzis had insisted that Alander keep them in close enough so that they could maintain a constant vigil. That’s how she thought of it. She wanted to witness the massacre—or at least as much of it as she could stand—because she knew someone should.

  The Frame had come to symbolize all that remained of humanity following the Spike, and it had been destroyed in a little under six hours. She found it difficult to comprehend that such a structure, woven as it was from two entire planets along with the bodies of untold billions of people, could have been so casually obliterated. No matter how hard she tried, she simply could not get her head around the fact that what she was watching might be the annihilation of her species, the death of humanity itself.

  In the hour or so prior to the Frame’s final destruction, the Starfish (as Alander had started referring to them) had seemingly gone crazy. Weaving a web of white points across the Frame, they had turned it into something resembling a giant Christmas tree. For a while it had looked as though they might have changed their minds, or perhaps that the Vincula had somehow given their attackers reason to think twice. But then the Starfish had retreated, and each of the points of light had flashed a pulsing, violent red, and within moments the Frame had been no more.

  Out of the spreading pall of rubble had come the last gasps of the Vincula, as dying minds clutched desperately at life among the millions of remotes and nodes scattered across the system. The silvery swarms of Starfish followed each and every electromagnetic emission to its source and obliterated them without exception. Even inactive stations like Io suffered the same fate. The systematic evisceration of Sol System went on relentlessly, with increasingly desperate and futile pleas from the survivors reaching the hole ship. Of the many minds that had once occupied the system, there now remained nothing but memories, hurled out into the vacuum like last-minute attempts to preserve something, anything, from total annihilation. And ten hours after the first attack, the last, echoing thoughts of her greater mind had dwindled to virtually nothing.

  The hole ship jumped a third time to avoid the Starfish cleanup crews. But barely had they arrived at the new location when they were attacked again.

  “They have become aware of my strategy,” the hole ship said while they jumped again. “I advise a complete withdrawal.”

  Alander glanced dark-eyed at Hatzis, and she nodded in agreement. “I’ve seen enough,” she said somberly.

  The hole ship took them so far away that Sol became just another bright and yellow star among the millions shining around them. The view made her feel strangely vulnerable.

  “Arachne,” she said, “are you sure they can’t follow us out here?”

  “As sure as I can be,” replied the AI. “Although it must be said that without any available data on the aggressors, I can offer no guarantees. Lacking detailed knowledge of their technology, it is impossible to determine precisely what they are capable of.”

  Standing, she took a deep breath and exhaled heavily, then began to nervously pace the cockpit. After a few moments, she stopped before Alander and fixed him with a sober stare.

  “When do you think it will be safe to go back?” she said.

  Alander looked startled by the question. “Go back?”

  “We’ll have to return at some point. We need to check for survivors.”

  “But the Starfish—”

  “There’s no reason why they should hang around,” she said. “After all, they abandoned Upsilon Aquarius once they’d finished with the Tipler.”

  She could tell by his sudden expression that her words had stung him and, for a fleeting moment, she regretted her insensitivity. But she quickly dismissed her guilt. It was hard enough dealing with her own grief without worrying about his. There would be a time for sensitivity later.

  “You know,” she said after a few moments of silence, “I think you were right.”

  His brow furrowed as he said, “About what?”

  “About this being a trap,” she said. “I think it’s possible this whole thing was a setup by the Spinners.”

  He laughed at this. “Come on, Caryl. I was just rambling back then. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  “Nevertheless, it does make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t, Caryl,” he said. “I was simply trying to rationalize what had happened. And that’s all you’re doing now. We want explanations for the unexplainable.”

  “Think about it, Peter,” she insisted. “Your survey team was bumbling along quite happily until the Spinners came on the scene. They mysteriously leave you a bunch of gifts, then disappear without a word. What’s the next thing you do after poking around for a bit? You contact Earth. Hell, they even give you a ship that will get you there in a couple of days. What more could you ask? I mean, Christ, all your dreams had come true at once!”

  She watched his reaction. He didn’t say anything, but she could tell from his expression she had his attention.

  “Well, what if your going back to Earth was what the
y were wanting you to do all along? What if they were feeding you just enough rope to hang us all?”

  “The gifts were placed there solely to get the hole ship to go to Sol?” His tone bordered on incredulity and amusement. “Come off it, Caryl! This is crazy.”

  “It’s not crazy,” she said firmly. “Once the hole ship had gone, they were free to wrap things up there. They had no more use for Adrasteia, so they got rid of the evidence.”

  “Evidence of what though?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But it does fit together.”

  “So you’re saying the gifts were sent as a means of tricking us into revealing the heart of our civilization? For the sole purpose of annihilating us?”

  Another shrug. “In a nutshell, yes.”

  “But they knew where Earth was,” he said. “They had access to all of our data.”

  “Perhaps they were bluffing, or perhaps they just weren’t sure. After all, if they had surveyed Sol, they would have found a reality very different from your maps. They may have thought your data deliberately falsified so it couldn’t be traced, much like what they’ve done with the hole ship and the gifts. The only way to be sure would have been to see where you actually went when given the opportunity.”

  “And then?” He left the question hanging, but she didn’t supply the answer. “What do you think happened then, Caryl?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. Maybe the hole ship uploaded some sort of viral attack when it arrived. Maybe it notified the Spinners. Maybe there are things it could’ve done that we’d never think of.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes.”

  “All I’m saying is that it’s a possibility. At the very least, it’s an explanation for what happened back in Sol.”

  She rubbed her pounding head, unsure whether she believed wholly in what she was saying but wanting to keep herself occupied, keep her mind from returning to the pain and anguish she had felt while her greater self died. If she sat down for too long, her thoughts returned to the memories of those endless hours, the despairing cries, and if she looked at the screen, at the vast starry emptiness, she was reminded of how vulnerable she felt.