Echoes of Earth

by Sean Williams

  She was distracted by a short, soft bleat from Alander, all he could manage in the way of a laugh.

  “We haven’t got a clue, really, have we?” he said when she looked at him. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? We haven’t got a fucking clue about anything!”

  “I know, and it’s driving me crazy.” The hope that some—even one—of her povs might have survived the attack because of her warning simmered inside her, making her restless. “I want to go back there.”

  “Why? There’s no point.”

  “Have you got another destination in mind?”

  He shook his head. “Okay, but not yet. I need to rest. It could be dangerous, and it’s not going to help if one of us is run down.”

  “I’m alert enough to handle it on my own.”

  “Two hours is all I need, then we’ll go back.”

  She was on the brink of denying his request when she realized that she was being unreasonable. What difference would two hours make, really? If any of her povs had survived the attack, they would survive that much longer.

  “Okay. I’ll keep watch from here.”

  He nodded and stood, then moved off in the direction of his cubicle. Before exiting the cockpit, he stopped and faced her again.

  “Call me if anything happens, okay?”

  “Of course I will.”

  He nodded once more and disappeared into his cubicle. She had no doubt that he would confirm his last request with the ship’s AI, ensuring that if she didn’t rouse him, it would. And while she couldn’t blame him for that (she would have done the same in his position), it did make her sad. If she and Alander were all that remained of humanity, instead of anything even remotely resembling camaraderie, all that existed between them was a mistrust that was positively palpable.

  2.2.5

  On the eighteenth hour of their search, they found an object identical in nearly every respect to the one left in Upsilon Aquarius.

  Alander had thought the ruins of Adrasteia bad, but they were nothing compared to the destruction that had been unleashed upon Sol System. Everywhere he looked he saw wreckage. The Frame had been completely atomized, along with the Shell Proper and anything functional that had clung to it. The thin atmosphere of Mars had been stripped away, along with every habitat on the planet that had harbored any form of life. The Moon had been blasted into fragments; the moons of Jupiter and Saturn were stripped bare, as was Mercury; the asteroid bases and deep-system stations, active or inactive, were clouds of dispersing dust. Every satellite, every relay, every navigation buoy and every experimental outpost like McKirdy’s Machine were all gone.

  The Starfish themselves had been gone for several hours, and the hole ship could find no evidence that they’d laid traps for anyone seeking to investigate what had happened. How the AI and Hatzis had determined the Starfish had gone, Alander hadn’t worked out. Nor did he ask. He preferred not to know if they’d simply assumed it had been safe to return. Such guesswork scared him.

  Hatzis was stone-faced all through the exploration of the system. When she did talk, it was in abrupt, clipped tones. She looked brittle, as though something deep inside of her had fractured, and the cracks were widening. He doubted that she had rested while he had, and he imagined her awake the whole time, brooding. Instead of trying to distract her from her thoughts, he stayed out of her way as much as possible, allowing her the freedom to be in control during this phase of the journey. He was content, for the moment at least, to be nothing more than an observer.

  She had instructed the hole ship to broadcast a low-power beacon everywhere they went, clearly hoping that someone, somewhere, had survived the assault on the system. But the lack of any response told them what he already suspected: The Starfish had, with frightening efficiency, eradicated all life within the system. In fact, there was little remaining to suggest there had ever been life there in the first place.

  Except one. When the hole ship announced that it had found something, her face came alive for a brief moment, then died again.

  “Another death marker,” he said, watching the object glint in Sol’s steady light, ten kilometers from the hole ship.

  Hatzis shrugged. “If that’s what it is.”

  “What else could it be? It’s certainly not a mine or some other kind of trap, or else we’d be dead already.”

  “I don’t know; it just doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing these slash-and-burn types would leave behind.”

  “We don’t know anything about them,” he said. “For all we know, the system might be a trophy for them and this thing is just an invitation for others of their kind to come and admire their work.”

  Her skeptical look was almost a sneer. “If they were conquerors, yes. They’d want everyone to know their might and power; they’d leave clues all over the place. But if the motive of these people really is to sneak up on others, obliterate them, then sneak away to do more damage elsewhere, I don’t see why they’d leave anything at all behind.”

  “But it’s not likely they could be traced by something like this, is it?”

  “Why not? There are bound to be ways to identify a culture from its artifacts, if only from the way it manufactures them or the materials it uses.”

  “I guess.”

  She stared at him as though wanting to say something else—or waiting for him to say something—then she looked away.

  “I’d be happy to find just one beneficent race,” she said. “One we can trust, anyway, who we could ask for help. Is there anyone we can appeal to, Arachne? Some sort of galactic police force, perhaps?”

  “There is no common moral code governing behavior in the galaxy,” the alien AI replied. “Even if there was one, there would be no guarantee that it would accord with your own.”

  “No rules, huh?” Her tone was bitter. “No wonder your makers keep to themselves, then.”

  Alander watched Hatzis’s face as she studied the screen, and he was reminded of Cleo Samson on that seemingly far-off day on Adrasteia when he had tried to take a bath. She had been talking to him about Lucia, about whether he would choose her company over solitude if he could. He hadn’t seen the point of such idle wishful thinking, to which Samson had said, “We all wish, Peter. It’s very much a human quality.” Looking at Hatzis now, he thought he knew what she would be wishing for.

  “So what do you want to do now?” he said shortly.

  “How the fuck should I know, Peter?” Her tone was low, but it contained enough scorn to sting him, nonetheless.

  “Look, Caryl,” he offered, “I can imagine how you feel right now. I—”

  Her derisive laugh cut him short. “Really? I don’t see how you could possibly have any idea—”

  “Hey!” he snapped. “I lost my home, too, remember?”

  “The comparison is ludicrous.”

  “Well, don’t expect me to tear my heart out over what happened to the Vincula, given the fact that they lied to me and attacked me without provocation. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a good thing it’s gone!”

  “If you’re trying to boost my morale, Peter,” she said, shaking her head, “you really suck at it.”

  “Okay,” he concurred, doing his best to keep a lid on his own emotions. “Fair point. But the fact remains that I am in exactly the same position as you, Caryl. We’ve both lost everything, and we need to consider what we’ll do next.”

  Her eyes were red and painful—the most human they had ever seemed to him. “If you’re about to suggest rebuilding, then you’re out of your mind. And blind.” She pointed at the screen as though stabbing it with her finger. “Have another look. There’s nothing left to rebuild with.”

  “We have two working brains, don’t we? We have Arachne. We can at least start. So what if it takes a thousand years to finish? Or a million? At least we’ll be doing something.”

  “Who says I want to do anything?” She turned away from him as if to end the discussion. “Arachne, take me to Io—the asteroid, not the moon.”<
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  The screen went black on the view of the death marker.

  “That’s it, then?” he pressed, not allowing the conversation to die. “We just roll over and give in?”

  “Humanity is dead,” she said. “The first thing you need to do is to accept that.”

  “There’s always hope,” he insisted, but even as he said it, he could hear how empty the words sounded.

  “For what?” she said. “For me? You have no idea what I’ve lost, Peter. It’s not just the idea of humanity as a species. I practically was my own species. Can you even begin to imagine what it felt like to belong to something like that? I can’t go back. I’d rather not exist at all if the only thing left to look forward to is life in this body.”

  The screen came alive with images of rubble, twinkling in the sunlight. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Are you saying you want kill yourself?” He stared at her incredulously for a few moments. “You can’t be serious!”

  “What I do is none of your business, Peter.”

  He could tell she wanted to move away from him, but with the cockpit being the size it was, there was simply nowhere for her to escape to.

  “You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. You don’t have to justify anything to me. You don’t have to talk to me or listen to anything I have to say. So why not do us both a favor right now and go for a space walk without a suit? Be sure to take your maudlin, self-pitying bullshit along with you.”

  She faced him with her arms folded across her chest, eyes glistening with tears. She looked so different from the Hatzis he remembered from Adrasteia—but he had never seen her under these circumstances.

  “There are no good alternatives,” she said.

  “I didn’t say there were. I just think suicide is always the wrong decision.”

  “Who gives a damn what you think, Peter?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe you do. After all, why else would you be arguing the point with me? Your body’s modified; you could just pull the plug right now and die if you really wanted to... in a second.” He waved a hand at the screen. “Well, here’s your precious Io, Caryl. Here’s where your father died. What are you waiting for? Rescue?”

  The tears were streaming freely down her cheeks now. “No,” she muttered.

  “Me to talk you out of it, perhaps? Despite what you say?”

  “No!”

  “Good, because—what was it you said?” Her apathy made him lash out, more angry now than frustrated. “Oh yes, that’s right. I’m dead on the inside, apparently. ‘Not truly human’—that was another one, wasn’t it? Although my favorite was: ‘a shortcut that went wrong.’ Maybe you should take some of your own advice regarding morale boosting.”

  “Fuck you, Peter,” she said weakly.

  “You know, Caryl, if your opinion of my life is so small, why don’t you just go ahead right now and switch off your fucking brain? Because you’re right; there is nothing left but me. Nothing worth worrying yourself about, anyway.”

  Hatzis’s face had gone a mottled pinkish white color. She opened her mouth to say something—but at that moment, a vibration shivered through the hole ship, as though someone had tapped its hull and made it ring like a bell.

  “I am receiving a message,” said the hole ship.

  The announcement took Alander completely by surprise. His anger instantly abated and was replaced by confusion.

  “What?” he said at the same instant and in the same tone as Hatzis.

  Then a voice he recognized—piercingly, like a knife to the gut—filled the cockpit. “This is Cleo Samson, civilian survey manager of the Carol Stoker, United Near-Earth Stellar Survey Program Mission S35, calling any surviving authority on or near Earth. In the course of our exploration of HD194640 and its sole habitable planet, Varuna, we have been contacted by an advanced civilization whose artifacts have enabled this communication. Please respond if you are able. We need your advice, I repeat, this is Cleo Samson...”

  The message cycled through three times, then ended. Alander listened to it in stunned silence, hardly daring to believe his ears.

  “Another one?” He turned to Hatzis, whose expression was as shocked as his. “Arachne, did you know about this?”

  “No, Peter.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, barely listening to the AI’s reply. “The Spinners went elsewhere! This changes everything!”

  “It changes nothing,” Hatzis said, regaining her composure.

  His brow furrowed deeply. “Of course it does! It’s not just us, now, Caryl. We have to call them, tell them what’s happened. Then we can go there, join forces—”

  “We can’t do that. They’re as good as dead, Peter.”

  He felt rage rush through him like he had never felt before. “I’ve had enough of your defeatist attitude. You may be in your original body—you may have been part of a hyperevolved human or whatever—but I’m still alive, and always have been. Everyone on the Frank Tipler was alive. Cleo Samson and everyone on the Stoker—they’re alive, too, along with God knows how many others in the survey program.” Even Lucia, he thought wildly to himself. “You have no right to condemn us before we even try, like—” Like my original’s dead-end bacteria.

  He turned away from her. “Arachne, I want to send—”

  Before he completed the instruction, Hatzis was physically across the room and throwing him into the wall with surprising force.

  He wheeled on her angrily. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Shut up, you idiot!” she hissed.

  “Look, kill yourself if you want, Caryl, but you’re not taking the rest of us with you! They’re alive, dammit!”

  “You don’t understand!” she shouted. “They’re already dead—”

  “Arachne,” he started again, without listening to her. But again, before he could finish his sentence, she had thrown herself at him.

  They grappled with one another, their ugly, graceless movements dictated more by force than leverage.

  “You’re making a mistake,” she managed. “You must—”

  “Arachne!” He raised his voice over hers. “Send a reply to Cleo Samson. Tell her—”

  Hatzis twisted in his grasp, slipping one hand free and bringing it into contact with his own. In an instant, something fiery burst behind his eyes. He screamed and let go of her, falling back onto the floor with his free hand over his face. His mind exploded with images of pain and despair. He was alone, dying, burning up in the same flames that had consumed an entire solar system.

  For an agonizing split second, he was Caryl Hatzis.

  Then his mind went blank, and he was nothing at all.

  * * *

  “If not for us, then for who?”

  He was in Lucia’s room, lying on her bed. Both of them were naked, having just had sex. He felt pleasantly warm and relaxed despite an intermittent tingle just behind and above his navel. He was afraid of admitting, even to himself, just how terrified he was. He wondered if everyone else felt the same and if they had found the same sort of distraction to take their minds off it.

  “Or whom? I can never remember which.”

  She seized upon the chance like a shark. She was at least as smart as him, and they both knew it. Neither of them knew why they got on so well, though—especially considering the disparity in their ages—but neither had even tried to fight it. It was more than just a physical attraction, although that was strong. He suspected it might be nothing more than the fact that they enjoyed playing the same games.

  “It won’t be us, Peter,” she said. “And yet it will be. I try not to get tangled in the metaphysics of it all. I just prepare as well as I can in order to prepare each of them. I don’t want to let anyone down, least of all myself.”

  “But you won’t be one of them.”

  “No.” She looked puzzled for a second, wondering, perhaps, where this was all leading. What game was this? “And neither will you. There’s no way the program could
afford to send even one of our bodies. We weigh too much; we sleep and eat too much; we get bored too easily—”

  “I know, I know.” He wasn’t sure where he was going, either. Maybe he was more afraid of staying behind than he was of leaving. The emphasis had been so much on the latter that he had begun to feel as if he really was leaving. But he wasn’t. It would just be his engrams.

  He rolled onto his back, and she followed him without hesitation. Her body slid smoothly next to his. He could feel the warm pressure of her hips and breasts against his side as keenly as her gaze on his face. Her hand rested flat upon his chest.

  “We’ll still be here,” she said, pressing down on his heart. “And that bothers me.”

  “It does?” He felt a new surge of alarm. Was she about to propose to him? Surely not! Not Lucia, of all people!

  If she did, he was sorely tempted to say yes, just to throw her a curveball. She wouldn’t expect that.

  But her next words reassured him.

  “Of course. I want to be one of them, Peter... out there, exploring, seeing things no one else has ever seen before.” She shrugged. “How could I not want that? I thought you did, too.”

  “Exploring, yes,” he said. “But not just to sightsee. I want to find answers, explanations for the things we still don’t understand.”

  “Knowledge is the payoff by which people like me have justified the entire program. I think the tourists outnumber the truth seekers, don’t you?”

  “Undoubtedly. And the truth seekers are happy to go along for the ride.”

  He kissed her. Christ, sometimes he thought he really could settle down with her, if only for a while. A year or two, perhaps; find an apartment in Kyoto or take a cruise; get to know each other really well in the process. It could be fun. The fact that it couldn’t possibly be permanent didn’t tarnish the notion. It never did. He’d had five short-term bonds with five women in his life, one of them, Emma, for seven years, and none of them had been as fascinating as Lucia. But what did she want?