by David Brin
She motioned with her left hand. “Drone three, bring up the lights.”
“Yesss,” came the response in a dull monotone. The semisentient robot, stilt-legged for asteroid work, stalked delicately over the rubble, in order to disturb as little as possible.
“Illuminate the far wall,” she told it.
“Yesss.” It swiveled. Suddenly there was stark light. Ursula gasped.
Across the dust-covered chamber were easily recognizable tables and chairs, carved from the very rock floor. Among them lay dozens of small mummies. Cold vacuum had preserved the bipeds, huddled together as if for warmth in this, their final refuge.
The faceted eyes of the alien colonists had collapsed from the evaporation of moisture. The pulled-back flesh left the creatures grinning—a rictus that made a seeming mockery of the aeons they had waited here.
She set foot lightly on the dust. “They even had little ones,” she sighed. Several full-sized mummies lay slumped around much smaller figures, as if to protect them from something.
“They must have been nearly ready to begin colonization when this happened.” She spoke into her portable log, partly to keep her mind moving. “We’ve already determined their habitat atmosphere had been almost identical to the Earth’s, so that we can assume that was their target.”
She turned slowly, speaking her impressions as she scanned the chamber.
“Perhaps the mother probe was programmed to modify the original gene information so the colonists would be perfectly suited for whatever planet environment was avail…”
Ursula suddenly stopped. “Oh my,” she sighed, staring. “Oh my God.”
Where her headlamp illuminated a new corner of the chamber, two more mummies lay slumped before a sheer-faced wall. In their delicate, vacuum dried hands there lay dusty metal tools, the simplest known anywhere.
Hammers and chisels.
Ursula blinked at what they had been creating. She reached up and touched the mike button on her helmet.
“Gavin? Are you still awake?”
After a few seconds there came an answer.
“Hmmmph. Yeah, Urs. I was in the cleaner though. What’s up? You need air or something? You sound short of breath.”
Ursula made an effort to calm herself… to suppress the reactions of an evolved ape—far, far from home.
“Uh, Gavin, I think you better come down here. I’ve found them.”
“Found who?” he muttered. Then he exclaimed. “The colonists!”
“Yeah. And… and something else, as well.”
This time there was hardly a pause. “Hang on, Urs. I’m on my way.”
Ursula let her hand drop, and stood for a long moment, staring at her discovery.
9
Greeter, Awaiter, and the others are getting nervous. They, too, have begun trying to awaken dormant capabilities, to reclaim bits of themselves that each donated to the whole.
Of course I cannot allow it.
We made a pact, back when we fragmented, broken survivors clustered together after this system’s last battle. All our little drones and subunits were nearly used up in that last coalescence. The last repair and replication capability any of us had was applied to combining and settling in to wait together.
We all assumed that when something from the outside arrived it would be another probe.
If it was some type of Rejector, we would try to lure it within reach of our pitiful remaining might. If it was a variety of Loyalist, we would ask it for help. With decent replication facilities, it would only take a few centuries for each of us to rebuild to our former glory.
Of course, the newcomer might even be an Innocent, though it is hard to believe the dangerous galaxy would let any new probe-race stay neutral for long.
Sooner or later however, we felt, another probe had to come.
We never imagined the wait would be so long… long enough for the little mammals on the water world to evolve into Makers themselves.
What has happened out there, while we drifted here? Could the War be decided, by now?
If the Rejecters have won, then it would explain the emptiness, the silence. Their various types would soon fall into fighting among themselves, until only one remained to impose its will on Creation.
One can narrow it down a little. If the Pure Berserkers had triumphed, they would have been here by now to sterilize the Earth and any other possible abode for life. And if the Gobblers prevailed, they would have already begun dismantling the nearby stars.
Berserkers and Gobblers are ruled out, then. Those types were too simpleminded, too obstinate anyway. They must be extinct by now.
But the Anti-Maker variety of Rejector, subtle and clever, might have won without our knowing it. That type does not waste its time destroying biospheres, or eating up solar systems in spasms of self-replication. It wants only to seek out technological civilizations and ruin them. Its repertoire of dirty tricks is legion.
And yet, with all the incredible radio racket the humans are putting out, would not Anti-Makers have homed in by now, to do their harm?
Greeter and Awaiter are are convinced that the Rejectors have lost, that it is safe now to send out a message to the Loyalist community, calling for help.
I cannot allow it of course.
They still have not figured out that even among Loyalists there can be disagreements. The Purpose… my Purpose… must be foremost. Even if it means betraying companions who waited with me through the long, long dark.
10
Ursula had started out thinking of them as somehow unsophisticated. After all, how could people, biological folk, be fully capable if they were born out of tanks and raised by machines? Here they had been decanted, but they had been meant for a planet’s surface. The ancient colonists could not have been anything but helpless pawns so long as they were out in space, dependent on the mammoth starmother probe and its drones for everything from heat to food to air.
But the creatures obviously had been aware of what was going on. The machines, apparently, had been programmed to teach them. And though all magnetic and superconducting records were long decayed, the biologicals had known a way to make sure that their story would someday be read… from a wall of chiseled stone.
“Interpreting the writing will have to wait for the experts,” Gavin told her unnecessarily as he used a gas jet gently to brush dust from uneven rows of angular letters incised in the rock. “With these pictograms to accompany the text, the professor types just may be able to decipher it.”
Gavin’s voice was hushed, subdued. He was still adjusting to what they had found here… a possible Rosetta Stone for an entire alien race.
“Perhaps,” Ursula commented. The little robot she had been supervising finished a multifrequency radar scan of the wall and rolled to one side, awaiting further instructions. Ursula stepped back and hopped up to sit cross-legged on another drone, which hummed beneath her, unresentful and patient.
In the feeble gravity Ursula’s arms hung out in front of her, like frames encompassing the picture she was trying to understand.
The creatures must have had a lot of time while the battles raged outside their deep catacombs, for the wall carvings were extensive and intricate, arrayed in neat rows and columns. Separated by narrow lines of peculiar chiseled text were depictions of suns and planets and great machines.
Most of all, pictographs of great machines covered the wall.
They had agreed that the first sequence appeared to begin at the lower left, where a two dimensional image of a starprobe could be seen entering a solar system—presumably this one—its planets’ orbits sketched out in thin lines upon the wall. Next to that initial frame was a portrayal of the same probe, now deploying sub-drones, taking hold of a likely planetoid, and beginning the process of making replicas of itself.
Eight replicas departed the system in the following frame. There were four symbols below the set of stylized child probes… Ursula could read the binary symbol for eight, and there
were eight dots, as well. It didn’t take much imagination to tell that the remaining two symbols also stood for the same numeral.
Ursula made a note of the discovery. Translation had begun already. Apparently this type of probe was programmed to make eight copies of itself, and no more. That settled a nagging question that had bothered Ursula for years.
If sophisticated self-replicating probes had been roaming the galaxy for aeons, why was there any dead matter left at all? It was theoretically possible for an advanced enough technology to dismantle not only asteroids but planets and stars, as well. If the replicant-probes had been as simplemindedly voracious as viruses, they would by now have gobbled the entire galaxy! There should be nothing left in the sky but a cloud of innumerable starprobes… reduced to preying on each other for raw materials until the entire pathological system fell apart in entropy death.
But that fate had been avoided. This type of motherprobe showed how it could be done. It was programmed to make a strictly limited number of copies of itself.
This type of probe was so programmed, Ursula reminded herself.
In the final frame of the first sequence, after the daughter probes had been dispatched to their destinations, the mother probe was shown moving next to a round globe—a planet. A thin line linked probe and planet. A vaguely humanoid figure, resembling in caricature the mummies on the floor, stepped across the bridge to its new home.
The first story ended there. Perhaps this was a depiction of the way things were supposed to have gone. But there were other sequences. Other versions of reality. In several, the mother probe arrived at the solar system to find others already there before it.
Ursula realized that one of these other depictions must represent what had really happened here, so long ago. She breathed quickly, shallowly, as she traced out the tale told by the first of these.
On the second row the mother probe arrived to find others already present. All the predecessors had little circular symbols next to them. In this case everything proceeded as before. The mother probe made and cast out its replicas, and went on to seed a planet with duplicates of the ancient race that had sent out the first version so long ago.
“The little circle means those other probes are benign,” Ursula muttered to herself.
Gavin stepped back and looked at the scene she pointed to. “What, the little symbols beside these machines?”
“They mean that those types won’t interfere with this probe’s mission.”
Gavin was thoughtful for a moment. Then he reached up and touched the row next above.
“Then this cross-like symbol…? He paused, examining the scene. “It means that that there were other types that would object,” he answered his own question.
Ursula nodded. The third row showed the mother probe arriving once again, but this time amidst a crowd of quite different machines, each accompanied by a glyph faintly like a criss-cross tong sign. In that sequence the mother-probe did not make replicates. She did not seed a planet. Her fuel used up, unable to flee the system, she found a place to hide, behind the star, as far from the others as possible.
“She’s afraid of them,” Ursula announced. She expected Gavin to accuse her of anthropomorphizing, but her partner was silent, thoughtful. Finally, he nodded. “I think you’re right.”
He pointed. “Look how each of the little cross or circle symbols are subtly different.”
“Yeah,” she nodded, sitting forward on the gently humming drone. “Let’s assume there were two basic types of Von Neumann probes loose in the galaxy when this drawing was made. Two different philosophies, perhaps. And within each camp there were differences, as well.”
She gestured to the far right end of the wall. That side featured a column of sketches, each depicting a different variety of machine, every one with its own cross or circle symbol. Next to each was a pictograph.
Some of the scenes were chilling.
Gavin shook his head, obviously wishing he could disbelieve. “But why? Von Neumann probes are supposed to… to…”
“To what?” Ursula asked softly, thoughtfully. “For years men assumed that other races would think like us. We figured they would send out probes to gather knowledge, or maybe say hello. There were even a few who suggested that we might someday send out machines like this mother probe, to seed planets with humans, without forcing biologicals to actually travel interstellar space.
“Those were the extrapolations we thought of, once we saw the possibilities in self-replicating probes. We expected the aliens who preceded us in the galaxy would do the same.
“But that doesn’t exhaust even the list of HUMAN motivations, Gavin. There may be concepts other creatures invented which to us would be unimaginable!”
She stood up suddenly and drifted above the dusty floor before the feeble gravity finally pulled her down in front of the chiseled wall. Her gloved hand touched the outlines of a stone sun.
“Let’s say a lot of planetary races evolve like we did on Earth, and discover how to make smart, durable machines capable of interstellar flight and replication. Would all such species be content just to send out emissaries?”
Gavin looked around at the silent, still mummies. “Apparently not,” he said.
Ursula turned and smiled. “In recent years we’ve given up on sending our biological selves to the stars. Oh, it’d be possible, marginally, but why not go instead as creatures better suited to the environment? That’s a major reason we developed types of humans like yourself, Gavin.”
Still looking downward, her partner shook his head. “But other races might not give up the old dream so easily.”
“No. They would use the new technology to seed far planets with duplicates of their biological selves. As I said, it’s been thought of by Earthmen. I’ve checked the old databases. It was discussed even in the twentieth century.”
Gavin stared at the pictograms. “All right. That I can understand. But these others… The violence! What thinking entity would do such things!”
Poor Gavin, Ursula thought. This is a shock for him.
“You know how irrational we biologicals can be, sometimes. Humanity is trying to convert over to partly silico-cryo life in a smooth, sane way, but other races might not choose that path. They could program their probes with rigid commandments, based on logic that made sense in the jungles or swamps where they evolved, but which are insane in intergalactic space. Their emissaries would follow their orders, nevertheless, long after their makers were ashes and the homeworld dust.”
“Craziness!” Gavin shook his head.
Ursula sympathized, she also felt a faint satisfaction. For all his ability to tap directly into computer memory banks, Gavin could never share her expertise in this area. He had been brought up to be human, but he would never hear within his own mind the faint, lingering echoes of the savannah, or see flickering shadows of the Old Forest… remnants of tooth and claw that reminded all biological men and women that the Universe owed nobody any favors. Or even explanations.
“Some makers thought differently, obviously,” she told him. “Some sent their probes out to be emissaries, or sowers of seeds… and others, perhaps, to be doctors, lawyers, policemen.”
She once more touched an aeons-old pictographs, tracing the outlines of an exploding planet.
“Still others,” she said. “may have been sent forth to commit murder.”
11
It is bittersweet to be fully aware again. The present crisis has triggered circuits and subunits that have not combined for a long, long time. It feels almost like another birth. After ages of slumber, I live again!
And yet, even as I wrestle with my cousins for control over this lonely rock for so long, I am reminded of how much I have lost. It was the greatest reason why I slept… so that I would not have to acknowledge the shriveled remnants that remain of my former glory.
I feel as a human must, who has been robbed of legs, sight, most of his hearing, and nearly all touch.
S
till, a finger or two may be strong enough, still to do what must be done.
As expected, the conflict amongst we survivors has become all but open. The various crippled probes, supposedly paralyzed all these epochs since the last repair drones broke down, have suddenly unleashed hoarded worker units—pathetic, creaking machines hidden away in secret crevices for ages. Our confederation is about to be broken up, or so it seems.
Of course I planted the idea to hide the remaining drones. The others do not realize it, but I did not want them spent during the the long wait.
Awaiter and Greeter have withdrawn to the sunward side of our planetoid, and most of the lesser emissaries have joined them. They, too, are flexing long-unused capabilities, exercising their few, barely motile drones. They are planning to make contact with the humans, and possibly send out a star-message, as well.
I have been told not to interfere.
Their warning doesn’t matter. I will allow them a little more time under their illusion of independence. But long ago I took care of this eventuality.
As I led the battle to prevent the Earth’s destruction, long ago, I have also intrigued to keep it undisturbed. The Purpose will not be thwarted.
I wait here. Our rock’s slow rotation now has me looking out upon the sweep of dust clouds and the hot, bright stars that the humans quaintly call the Milky Way. Many of the stars are younger than I am.
I contemplate the universe as I await the proper time to make my move.
How long I have watched the galaxy turn! While my mind moved at the slowest of subjective rates, I could follow the spiral arms swirling visibly past this little solar system, twice bunching for a brief mega-year into sharp shock fronts where molecular clouds glowed, and massive stars ended their short lives in supernovae. The sense of movement, of rapid travel, was magnificent, though I was only being carried along by this system’s little sun.
At those times I could imagine that I was young again, an independent probe once more hurtling through strange starscapes toward the unknown.
