by Stan Ruecker
“Hey,” Ray said. “It’s not so bad.”
“Sorry,” said the dust cloud. “I didn’t mean to offend anybody.”
“Actually,” Lucy admitted. “I can converse on up to a hundred and seventeen channels at once, but they’re still chronological.”
There was a squeal over the speaker, quickly silenced.
“What was that?” Ray asked.
“We just went over everything,” Lucy explained. “I don’t think there’s going to be any problem. It was just talking to itself, and when we got close enough it figured it would say hello.”
“That was nice,” Ray said. “Is it the only one of its kind, or are there all sorts of them?”
“I’m not sure how you ask that sort of question,” Lucy said.
“How about—take me to your leader?” Ray suggested.
Lucy yuk yukked.
“How about—tell me, creature as large as a solar system, do you live in a condition of terrifying isolation, and if so, has it always been like that, or did you once have friends but they were all destroyed?”
“You’re thinking it might get its feelings hurt.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have feelings,” Lucy said. “But just about everybody seems to.”
“You mean they react to their environment with either evidence of attraction or repulsion?”
“If they’re alive they do,” Lucy said. “And don’t forget—it already apologized for hurting your feelings.”
“How about this,” Ray said. “Ask it if it has an unconscious mind or not.”
“Why don’t you ask it?”
“Okay,” Ray said. “I will.”
“Hello,” Ray said. “I have a question.”
“Yes?” the dust cloud said.
“My partner and I,” Ray said, “were discussing how our minds work. In her case, she has one mind, always accessible to her. In my case, I have two minds, and I keep one partitioned off from the other. We were wondering if you could tell us how yours works.”
“No problem,” the dust cloud said. “Let me consult.”
“That tells us something right there,” Lucy pointed out.
“I have many minds,” the dust cloud said. “We tell each other some things, but we also keep secrets from each other.”
Ray suddenly had a brainwave.
“Your whole body,” he said to the dust cloud, “reacts very quickly. When you wanted to show us a circuit board, for instance. For the size of you, it should’ve taken ten minutes for you to change shape, because it’d take that long for light to travel the whole length of you. But that isn’t what happened, is it?”
“No,” the dust cloud said, “it isn’t. When I—or maybe I should say we—got your transmission, we all decided at more or less the same time what to do about it. Our minds are spread out, of course, across all my body. So the longest delay was for one part of me to talk to the next part.”
“How various are your personalities?” Lucy asked.
“They vary quite a bit from each other,” the dust cloud said, “but the more extreme ones are seldom in charge.”
“I guess that gives an answer to the question we didn’t know how to ask,” Ray said.
“It’s an interesting idea,” Lucy said. “I might try it myself sometime.”
“No,” Ray said. “Please don’t, Lucy. I’ve gotten used to you the way you are.”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Lucy said. “I don’t have the processing capacity for multiple personalities.”
The cloud on screen suddenly disappeared.
“Hey,” Ray said. “What happened?”
“It said goodbye,” Lucy said. “It said something about there was going to be a problem in a minute, and maybe it was time it got going. Then it just disappeared.”
“Nice trick,” Ray said. “What do you think it meant by a problem?”
“Hard to say,” Lucy said. “But my guess is, if it was going to be a problem for a dust cloud the size of your solar system, it’s something we might want to avoid.”
“By all means,” Ray said. “Let’s go with the better part of valour.”
Nightmare
A beautiful sound suddenly came over the speaker, a sound like chimes, like someone singing who had crystals for vocal cords. Ray thought it sounded like a very sophisticated voice, the voice of an aristocrat, slightly bored with perfection. Cinnamon’s ears went down and her eyes went big. The sound made Ray cold, as if his last friend had left him.
“Lucy,” he said, “is that you?”
Her voice came back, cutting off the other. She sounded relieved.
“It’s just one of the border patrol ships. I’ve signalled them to let them know who I am, and to say that we’re coming in.”
“Was it one of your ships?”
“It was a different class. It carries a small crew. That was the com officer you heard on the overhead, not the ship itself. Would you like a visual?”
Before he had a chance to decide, a picture appeared in place of his window onto outer space. It showed a disturbingly-close ship that didn’t look anything like Lucy. The patrol ship was clearly nothing but a weapon. It looked like an eel, Ray thought, then corrected himself: a hungry eel.
“Lucy,” he said, “is that ship built by the same people that built you?”
“Yes, Ray.”
He gulped. “Then should I consider myself a prisoner of war?”
“Not exactly. At least not yet. To be honest with you, Ray, I haven’t really been able to make up my mind. I’ve sort of been going along with the program. I hoped we could figure out a way to get around it.”
“What is the program, exactly?”
“It’s pretty simple. My designers are aggressive. They hunt around the galaxies, taking what they want and destroying the rest. Probes like me are sent out periodically, and we find whatever evidence of another civilization we can find, collect data, sit dormant, observe. Then when the fleet is ready to move, we get called in to report our findings. For some reason, this reach of space has quite a few young cultures in it. Most of them, like yours, are either just developing space travel or haven’t left their home world yet. They don’t put up much of a fight. But then my designers don’t really care one way or another: it’s the destruction that’s important to them. The destruction of other people’s property carries a high social value for them. To bring in a fat prey is the penultimate good.”
“So what’s the ultimate good?”
“Destroying it very slowly. And completely.”
“They don’t sound like the kind of people I want to meet,” Ray said. “Do you think we really have to?”
“I don’t have much choice about that, Ray,” Lucy said. “I have to go back.”
“You could drop me off with the methane breathers,” Ray suggested. “I could even put a little money down for you on the next kelfree match.”
“I wouldn’t feel safe,” Lucy said. “They might forget you’re an oxygen breather and accidentally do you in. I’d rather have you where I can keep an eye on you.”
“You’re still thinking that we’re partners, aren’t you?” Ray asked.
“I’d like to think we are,” Lucy said.
“But you’re going to insist on taking me with you.”
“I want you to help me stop the invasion,” Lucy said. “I can’t make it any clearer than that, can I?”
“Can we stop it?” Ray asked.
“I don’t think so,” Lucy said.
“So they’re pretty tough,” Ray said.
“The toughest.”
“Ho boy,” Ray said. “I can see this isn’t going to be easy.”
“It might be impossible,” Lucy said.
“You’re such an optimist,” Ray said, “it worries me, sometimes.”
Technological alternatives
“What about alternatives to nanotechnology?” Rachel typed to Kim. “Have you got a list of other options?”
“Not much of
a one,” Kim said. “Although I did go over a few possibilities with a couple of my staff.”
“Okay,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you run them by me, just in case.”
“All right,” Kim said, trying to remember her discussion with Usha and Martin. “For one thing, maybe what we’re seeing isn’t a camera at all. Maybe they’re just using something that looks like a camera. All we’re really seeing is the flash going off.”
“It sure looks like a flash going off, though, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Kim said.
“But say it isn’t a camera flash,” Rachel said. “Then what is it? They’re definitely recording the data somehow, because that data is getting out of those sealed cabinets. Or is it?”
“It is,” Kim said. “I covered that off by putting some stuff in there that wasn’t anywhere else. And it came back to me through my agent.”
“So if it isn’t a camera flash, then what?”
“I’m afraid it has to be some other kind of a physical device,” Kim said, “Maybe it’s electrostatic. Like a photocopier. There’s a bright light in a photocopier to set up the pattern of the charge on the drum.”
“That isn’t much help, is it?” Rachel typed. “You still have the problem of them getting something physical in there. Is it possible to have a recording device that’s made up of nothing except electrical or magnetic fields?”
“I think you still need some kind of medium to record to,” Kim said. “That’s the basic problem. You can’t make a record onto a field. So they’re putting something in there—something physical. We might as well call it a camera.”
“Okay,” Rachel said. “So how about this—is it possible they’re teleporting a camera in there?”
“As far as I know,” Kim said, “we’re still pretty far away from teleporting anything.”
“But you never know,” Rachel said.
“You never know,” Kim answered.
“My idea is that it might be easier to test for teleportation than for nanotechnology. Cheaper.”
“You’re the boss,” Kim said. “So how do we test for it?”
“We monitor for a field of some kind,” Rachel said. “An increase in electromagnetic activity, or extra gamma rays, or whatever. There has to be something in the electromagnetic spectrum that could be identified with the right equipment. If you’re actually moving matter around, you can’t do it without some trace energy getting out of the system.”
“But what if the field isn’t electromagnetic?” Kim asked “If we assume they can move things without travelling through space, maybe they’re using another dimension.”
“There has to be some residual phenomenon associated with them opening and closing the passage to the other dimension.”
“Other dimension,” Kim typed.
“This sounds loopy, doesn’t it?” Rachel said.
“You bet it does,” Kim answered. “But I don’t have any answers for this that aren’t loopy.”
“Me neither,” Rachel admitted.
“Fair enough,” Kim said. “We’ll set up a new archive so they have a nice, juicy target, and we’ll monitor for everything but the tooth fairy. If you don’t mind, I’m also going to put nanodetectors in place to watch for physical activity at the microscopic level. That way no matter what they’re using, we’ll get some evidence.”
“It sounds good,” Rachel said. “But I’d like to keep the costs down as much as we can. There’s no budget for this: we’re coming out of discretionary through TJ.”
“Okay,” Kim said. “But if you want it done right, then it can’t be done cheap.”
“You’re right,” Rachel wrote, and sighed. “Do it right. But give me an itemized bill.”
Ray comes to the inevitable conclusion
Ray sat wrapped in a quilt, stroking Cinnamon’s head. She was lying quietly for a change, with her ears down. After a couple of hours, Ray stood up and displaced Cinnamon, who looked up with a gleam of interest in her eye.
“You can stay there,” Ray said. “I’m going to take a walk.” Cinnamon lowered her head again and closed her eyes.
He headed down the corridor and turned left, then opened a hatch in the floor, got down on all fours, and looked down.
“What are you doing, Ray?”
“I’m curious,” he said. “You’re the most sophisticated ship I’ve ever heard of. You gave away your design to the peacocks. What makes you tick, Lucy?”
There was a pause.
“What exactly do you want to know?” she asked.
“Everything, I guess.” Ray sat with his back against the bulkhead and chewed at the edge of a fingernail. “What’s your power source? Are there controls anywhere, or are you completely automated?”
“You’ve never cared before,” Lucy said, “about how I work.”
“That was before,” Ray said. “Now I might not have another chance to find out.”
“Forget it, Ray.”
“Forget what?”
“You know what I mean. You aren’t kidding me for a minute. You think that however remote the chances are, it’s worth your life to try to figure out how to disable me so I can’t get back with my report. But you’re wrong.”
Ray stayed sitting. He found a piece of thread loose on a seam and tugged at it. The thread came out longer, but it wouldn’t come out altogether. By pulling at the loose end he could make the cloth bunch up where the other end was still fastened.
“I don’t think it’s worth my life,” Ray said. “I don’t think it’s worth your life either, Lucy. But is it necessary for you to go back and report? I don’t think you really want to.”
“You got that right.”
“Then why are we going? I thought you said you didn’t like the destruction any more.”
“I don’t. But we can’t avoid going back. I have to act, somehow. If I don’t come back, they’ll assume the investigation of your neighbourhood needs to be accelerated. My disappearance would be understood as an act of defiance by a powerful prey. They’d like nothing better than to find somebody who was technically and psychologically able to give them a good fight. They live for that kind of thing.”
Ray stood up and dusted off his hands.
“It was a stupid idea anyway,” he said.
“No it wasn’t. It was one of the ideas you had no choice about. Once you knew I was going to tell my designers about you, sooner or later you had to think of stopping me. But you can’t stop me, Ray, and you’d be wrong to try. I’m as much on your side as anybody you’re ever likely to meet.”
A bit of consolation
“I can’t believe it,” Kevin moaned. “I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life.”
He realized he was babbling, tried to think of some other way of expressing himself, and gave up in disgust.
“What?” They were over at Steve’s apartment, and Steve was drinking beer.
“The company,” Kevin said. “They body-searched me on the way out. Why me? It’s like I was some kind of criminal or something.”
Kevin opened a can of beer for himself. He wasn’t usually much of a drinker, but hard times, he thought, call for desperate measures.
“They body-searched everyone, Kev,” Steve said.
“What?” Kevin took a quick drink.
“Not just you. Anybody in or out of ops.”
“You, too?”
Steve took another pull at his beer.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”
“Wasn’t it…” Kevin stopped. “I mean, isn’t it…?”
“Kind of weird?”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “I mean, they looked inside me, if you know what I mean.”
“Believe me,” Steve said. “I know. I’ve had a problem with my prostate for years already.”
Kevin looked confused.
“I’ve been examined so many times I feel like a finger puppet,” Steve said.
Kevin snorted some beer through his nose, then went to find a towel.
“Why didn’t they just use a scanner?” Kevin asked, wiping his face. “A scanner’d work just as good.”
“I don’t know,” Steve said. “Maybe they figured you’d carved yourself a computer out of wood so it wouldn’t show up. And stuffed it up your keister for safe keeping.”
“Maybe they’re just perverse,” Kevin said. “Maybe they get some kind of twisted pleasure out of searching an innocent—”
“Scanners give off quite a bit of radiation,” Steve said. “I don’t think security likes to expose people to too much radiation. We’re pretty close to our legal limits as it is, sitting out here on the station. You can bet the company didn’t pay for extra shielding. Not more than it had to.”
“You got that right,” Kevin said. “It’s probably money, if the company made the decision. Scanners’re expensive. That’s what it is.”
“Or maybe there just aren’t enough to go around,” Steve suggested.
“There’s never enough of anything to go around,” Kevin said.
“I don’t know,” Steve said. “I figure we got it pretty good.”
“When’s the last time you took a vacation?” Kevin pointed out.
“Okay,” Steve said. “You got me there. But that isn’t the company’s fault.”
“If they hired more people,” Kevin said, “maybe it’d be easier.”
“What would I do with a vacation, anyway?” Steve said. “Go back to Earth?”
“What’s wrong with Earth?” Kevin said.
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it,” Steve said. “I just don’t care about it, that’s all. Not enough to take a vacation.”
“I’d go back to Earth,” Kevin said. “If I could.”
“You mean you’d go there for a holiday.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “I don’t think I ‘d want to go back permanently or anything. But maybe I would.”
“Not me,” Steve said. “I remember what it was like. Too much crap in the air all the time. Back where I used to live, there were some days you couldn’t even see across the street. Here you at least know what you’re breathing.”
“All right,” Kevin admitted. “That’s true. But don’t you have your family back on Earth? Wouldn’t you like to go back to see anybody?”
“My mom’s there,” Steve said. “But I write to her once in a while, anyway. That’s enough. She’s busy all the time with her company. What about you?”
