Transcendental

by Gunn, James

  “And don’t believe his stories,” Riley said, finishing his breakfast. “I understand. What about our situation?” he continued, nodding toward the view screen.

  “The captain has announced that the nexus ahead is some days’ journey from here and that we should expect no change until further notice.”

  “And how are our fellow pilgrims reacting?” Riley said. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell. But now…” He gestured at the galactics clustered like statues in front of the view screen.

  “Even galactics have moments of uncertainty,” Asha said. “They have a long history of encountering the unknown and somehow making it galactic—”

  “They weren’t that good with humans,” Riley said.

  “They thought they knew us, and what they knew they didn’t like—the aggression, the arrogance—the kind of behavior galactics have forgotten they themselves ever exhibited. Now they think only about the good of all. Or so they believe.”

  “We should have been happy with the crumbs they were willing to let fall our way,” Riley said.

  Asha dismissed his sarcasm with a wave of her hand. “But none of them has ever been this far into the unknown, with no way back. Their galactic confidence doesn’t work well out here. They may turn catatonic.”

  “And yet they continue.”

  “That’s the contradiction. The pull of the transcendental on the other side balanced against the fear of the unknown.”

  “Why do they do it?” Riley asked.

  “Why do you do it?”

  Riley shrugged. “I’m not like them. Someday I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

  “I can’t wait,” Asha said. “I have long suspected that you don’t believe in transcendence.”

  “I’m a hardheaded ex-soldier,” Riley said. “I believe in what I can see and touch.”

  “And maybe you think you can’t be improved,” Asha said.

  “Rather that there’s no practical method for making improvements outside of self-discipline and learning from one’s failures. A man is what a man is; he recognizes his deficiencies and tries to conquer them or plans around them.”

  “So—why are you here?”

  “Because you’re all here,” Riley said. “You and the others—you believe in spite of everything you know, in spite of everything life has taught you. Maybe you’re right.”

  “These galactics,” Asha said. “Their experience teaches them that there is always something new, something better. But they don’t equate that with good; for them change is dangerous. But they have to go find it because to leave it undiscovered is even more dangerous.”

  “That isn’t too much different from most humans,” Riley said. “But there are always a few humans, among the rest, who don’t believe in the status quo, who look to the future for something better, who believe that in change there is hope. Maybe these galactics belong to that group.”

  “Or maybe they’re sent to make sure that the kind of creatures you’re describing don’t return to endanger the status quo.”

  Riley would have replied but he was interrupted by the entrance of Tordor from the corridor outside the passengers’ quarters. The weasel followed him.

  Tordor said, “Xi reports that he has found the bodies of Jon and Jan in the cold-storage locker.”

  * * *

  “This person was checking food stores when the human equivalent withdrew because of cold,” Xi said. Even in translation, the “cold” reference seemed scornful. “Xifora are raised to ignore personal suffering.”

  “Xifora have the evolutionary advantage of being able to regrow lost appendages,” Riley said. “Humans have only one set that must last their entire existences. What happened in the storage locker?”

  “This person seized the opportunity to explore two remote cabinets that the human equivalent had avoided. The frozen bodies of the two missing humans were in them.”

  “Does the human equiv—the crew member—know that the bodies have been discovered?”

  “The human equivalent has no knowledge.”

  Riley looked at Asha. Her expression didn’t change. He looked at Tordor, but Tordor’s alien face was always unreadable. He looked back at the weasel named “Xi.” He must remember that.

  “I never forget,” his pedia said.

  “This person—I thank you for this important information,” Riley said. And then to Asha and Tordor, “What do you think this means?”

  Asha shrugged.

  Tordor said, “The captain told us otherwise. Only he knows why, or why the bodies are in cold storage.”

  “And what are we to do about them?” Riley said, gesturing at the galactics some meters away staring silently at the display of their celestial isolation.

  Tordor flicked his proboscis. “They will adjust.”

  “For masters of the galaxy,” Riley said, “they seem remarkably fragile.” Their enraptured positions were beginning to concern him. Many of them hadn’t moved since he entered the lounge.

  “Masters are only masters in their own domains,” Tordor said. “Remove them and they are even less confident than those who have never known security. Galactics have known vastnesses, but these are not the vastnesses they know.”

  “And if they don’t adjust?” Riley insisted.

  Tordor flicked his proboscis again. “They will die.”

  “And you think Asha and I are not affected because we’ve never been secure in our positions?”

  Tordor blew through his long nose. “The polite answer is that the Big Gulf is no more intimidating to humans than the galaxy itself. You have emerged too recently to be affected by the unknown.”

  “The impolite answer,” Asha said, “is that humans are too stupid to realize the peril of the unexplored.”

  “So much for the pursuit of the transcendental,” Riley said. He glanced again at the group in front of the view screen, who represented the best, perhaps, of the ancient species that discovered spaceflight long before humanity discovered fire and took dominion over their spiral arm of the galaxy.

  “It propels us all,” Tordor said, “from the earliest cluster of cells surrendering their comfortable individual existences in order to sample the untested potential of cooperation.”

  “Evolution equals transcendence?” Riley asked.

  “Except evolution has become too slow,” Asha said. “Technology has accelerated everything. The environmental change that once took long-cycles now takes only short-cycles and sometimes even days. Such time-spans magnify dangers, and change transforms conditions as we watch.” Tordor waved his proboscis in what appeared to be agreement. “For a time sapient creatures such as ourselves substituted social evolution, an attempt to direct natural transcendental forces into safe channels. But we were fools.

  “We didn’t understand that technology is the new evolution,” Asha said, “Like robots, like computers, technology reaches a point where it grows and changes and evolves into something new and strange and unimaginable.”

  “And so,” Tordor said, “the Transcendental Machine was inevitable. We may be fortunate that technology has produced the Transcendental Machine and not the transcendent machine; that technology has offered us the opportunity to perfect ourselves rather than technology itself.”

  “If, indeed, we are perfectible,” Riley said. He turned toward Asha. “You seem to know a lot about galactic matters.”

  “I spent a good deal of my life among galactics,” Asha said, “while you were fighting them. Someday I may tell you about it.” She smiled as if to indicate that she knew she was repeating Riley’s own nebulous promise. “But galactics are only humanity writ large. They evolved as we did, and from a beginning that none of them understand any more than we do ours. The only difference is that they have had thousands upon thousands of years to get accustomed to difference and how to coexist with it. Now they must face it again. Whether they can adjust again is the question they must answer.”

  Riley turned to Xi. “What about it? Can you adjus
t?”

  “As easily as growing a new limb,” Xi said, exhibiting its new arm.

  Riley shrugged and went to see the captain.

  * * *

  The captain was not apologetic. “Where did you get this information?” he demanded. The two of them in his compact quarters were almost nose to nose.

  “Does it matter?” Riley asked.

  “This is what concerned me when you forced upon me the crazy scheme of passengers mingling with the crew.”

  “That the truth would emerge?”

  “That my authority would be challenged. You can’t run a ship like a democracy and certainly not like a galactic consensus council.”

  “You can’t run a ship on lies, either, Ham, and you aren’t going to run this ship at all unless you bring the passengers along with you,” Riley said. “Right now they’re petrified in front of the passenger lounge view screen.”

  “Our glorious galactics?”

  “Yes, and we humans, including your crew, are too dumb to be afraid of the Great Gulf. I’ve been through all that already with Asha and Tordor. The fact is that the galactics are terrified, like agoraphobics, because they’re outside their limits.”

  As the captain sat down, the stool swung out from the wall to support him before he could reach the floor. He didn’t notice. “Then maybe they have ceased to be a factor.”

  “They’ll either be a burden and worthless when they are needed, or they will emerge from their psychological paralysis angry and prepared to lash out at anybody who put them here.”

  “But they agreed to venture into the Great Gulf!”

  Riley leaned back against the bulkhead and folded his arms across his chest. “How many times have you agreed to something under duress and detested the authority that made you choose?”

  Ham shrugged. “What makes you think we’ll need them?”

  “Wherever we’re going,” Riley said, “we’re going to need every body we can call upon. You know what happened when we humans blundered out into a galaxy already owned by older civilizations. The next spiral arm is going to be even more dangerous because it’s going to be even more alien.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “The first thing: show me the bodies.”

  The captain shrugged in resignation and led the way down progressively narrower passageways to the storage compartment at the rear of the ship, next to the engine room. Antique automated equipment chugged away turning refuse into plastic containers and filling them with reconstituted foodstuffs recovered from sources Riley had never wanted to think about. His breakfast turned sour in his stomach and threatened to rise into his throat. At the back of the storage compartment was an insulated hatchway. When the captain activated the lock, the hatch swung open and cold air gushed over Riley.

  The captain silently led Riley past upright and horizontal lockers filled with natural and irreplaceable eatables, Riley hoped—though he feared they were empty—until they reached a row of horizontal lockers in a far corner. They were depressingly similar to the cabinets in which the passengers spent their sleep periods.

  The captain pulled open the closest of the cabinets. Inside, snuggled in insulating foam, was the body of Jan, eyes closed, face peaceful as if in sleep. The captain motioned to the cabinet just beyond. “Jon is there.”

  “Why?” Riley asked.

  “Jan fell victim to his own assassination plan—or staged event intended to be discovered for reasons not apparent. His death seems to have been an accident.”

  “How do you know assassination was intended?”

  “He arrived on the ship with information about how to activate disabled long-sleep processes, and once aboard he must have obtained information on how to enter the passenger quarters and which cabinet you occupied.”

  “Presuming I was the intended target and not someone else, or anybody else.”

  The captain nodded. “Jon told us that much before he froze up—literally. He didn’t know about Jan’s condition until my first mate let it slip during interrogation, and then Jon turned on some internal apparatus and turned to ice before we could act.”

  Riley remembered the half-sentient creature in his head and wondered whether it had that capability. “Let’s wake them and ask.”

  The captain shook his head. “Our chances are less than fifty percent. Even at its best, the long-sleep process killed one out of five, as you know. And I don’t want assassins wandering around.”

  Riley didn’t tell the captain that at least one other assassin besides himself was wandering around nor that he had instructions to assassinate the Prophet if that became necessary. Instead he said, “Let me see what skills we have among the galactics.”

  * * *

  Riley nodded at Asha and Tordor as he returned to the passenger quarters and immediately wondered if Tordor knew what a nod meant. “The bodies are there all right,” he told them. He motioned to Xi, who was sucking nourishment from a tube at a different location on the food dispensing wall. “I have seen the bodies that you described,” he said. “Where you said they were. How they were.”

  The galactic’s face, as usual, was impossible for Riley to read. He whined. “So,” Riley’s pedia translated.

  “So,” Riley said, “they are not dead but frozen, and unless we can think of a reason to thaw them and a way to do it that isn’t likely to leave them truly dead they are likely to remain so. Like your fellow galactics.” He gestured at the group around the view screen.

  “Frozen but not dead?” Tordor said.

  “And about as much use,” Riley said, and, as if on impulse, spun and made his way through the immobile galactics to the far wall. He reached up into the holographic display and flipped the hidden switch.

  The display went dead. The difference was scarcely perceptible, but after a moment the audience reacted, each of the galactics in its characteristic equivalent to a human blinking its eyes and focusing on what was in front. But then, they all moved as one in a surge toward Riley.

  “Hold on!” Riley said, as alien noises made talking difficult. “We’re fellow pilgrims.” Most of the mob didn’t stop, but the flower child and the Sirian hesitated.

  Then Tordor was beside Riley, speaking basic Galactic. “Stop! Let the human speak.”

  The mass movement slowed and then stopped, but Riley could not discern any reduction in galactic fury.

  “I am here as your representative to report on two matters.” The mob tension eased. “The first is that the two human crew members, Jon and Jan, have been found by Xi, and I have observed them in cold storage, frozen but perhaps not dead. They represented a threat to one or more of the passengers, the captain has said, and perhaps to the voyage itself. Whether they will be thawed depends on the captain’s assessment of risk and the availability of methods to thaw them successfully. We, too, must consider what information they might provide that is worth the risk to us.”

  The galactics moved apart and began to look at one another as if questioning their earlier surrender to mob emotion.

  “Second,” Riley continued, “I ask that you allow the view screen to be turned off until we have something better to observe.”

  The easing tension seemed to build again, and Tordor gave Riley a sideward glance, which involved a turning of his massive head, as if warning against pursuing this line of discussion.

  Riley pressed on. “We’re all on board this battered old ship heading into the unexplored in pursuit of the unknown.” He paused to let the various pedia do their job. “We humans have been told that we have emerged too recently from the prison of our solar system to appreciate the terrors of the Great Gulf.” He paused again. “Maybe so. But we humans know that we would never have emerged if we had allowed ourselves to fear the unexplored, and the experience of your species must have been the same.”

  He looked over the diverse group assembled in front of him, like a microcosm of the sentient galaxy itself. “To make it through to the other side of the unknown we
will need everybody to contribute whatever skills and wisdom they have developed. For that reason we have started telling each other about ourselves so that we can become a successful team. Tordor started, and—” looking up, Riley saw the weasel speaking to Asha “—and Xi will follow.”

  Xi moved in a way that might have been interpreted in a human as a start of surprise or even of alarm.

  The barrel-like Sirian moved forward. Its voice, too, sounded like echoes from the bottom of a barrel. “A nice deference,” Riley’s pedia translated. “The human is right. We have become feeble of will and weak of action. We should not need the humans to remind us of our responsibilities. We should admit them to our consensus.”

  The galactics did not seem to confer or move toward one another but a muted cacophony reached Riley and Tordor. “So be it,” Tordor said.

  He led the way through the throng to the other side of the compartment. “You are members of the community,” Tordor said to Riley and Asha. “Not exactly full members, but you will not be excluded from our consensus.”

  “That’s good news,” Riley said.

  “I am learning the subtleties of human irony,” Tordor said.

  Riley raised his eyebrows in Asha’s direction. “Now,” he said, turning to Xi, “we will be looking forward to hearing your story.”

  “I do not understand the term ‘irony,’” Xi said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Xi’s Story

  Xi said:

  Xifor is a cruel world of rocky continents and cold seas whose misery is relieved by a few fertile valleys near the equator. According to Xifora scientists, Xifor life began and civilization emerged in those valleys. Xifor’s sun is old and dim. Xifora scientists speculate that Xifor was a rocky wanderer from outer space that strayed into the Xifor system late in its evolution and was captured and dropped into orbit by the competing tyranny of its gas giants. Certainly Xifor is unique among the other planets of the system, which are all gas giants, although some have Xifor-size satellites. Some scientists insist that Xifor is one of those satellites torn free by the attraction of a massive passing body and condemned to an obscure orbit among the giants.