Semper Human

by Ian Douglas

  There was intelligence here, and of a high order.

  “Begin QCC transmission of all incoming data,” she told Luther. “Including the local metric.”

  You weren’t supposed to be able to transmit anything out of a black hole, but quantum-coupled communications networks were different. On a quantum level, there was no difference between here and there; a message generated at one point appeared on the appropriately coded receivers at another, literally without passing through the space in between.

  The OM-27 continued to fall toward the alien structure.

  Star Lord Rame’s Office

  Marine Transport Major Samuel Nicholas

  Objective Samar

  1340 hours, GMT

  “Your efforts,” Rame told the assembled Star Lord Conclave within his mind, “are not helping. Indeed, you may have so alienated Garroway and his people that they will no longer be willing to help us.”

  “Nonsense,” Valoc said, drawing herself up taller, and letting her corona flare. “The Marines are here at our sufferance. They will do what we direct them to do.”

  “No, Lord Valoc, they will not. General Garroway will refuse any order that is clearly not in the best interests of his Marines.”

  “That is…ridiculous,” Tavia Costa said. “The military cannot be a democracy. The soldier cannot decide whether or not he will obey orders that might lead to his death. Soldiers are created to face death at the orders of those above them.”

  “General Garroway feels he has a responsibility to the people under his command. A responsibility to see to their best interests.”

  “We can replace Garroway with another.”

  “You could. I have the feeling that any other Globe Marine would act in the same manner. Remember. These people have a tremendously strong bond with one another, a bond far greater than any they share with non-Marines. That, after all, was one reason this particular group of Marines volunteered to enter cybernetic hibernation in the first place. They had little in common with the human-civilian culture of eight and a half centuries ago. They have far less with us.

  “And for that reason, I have the strong feeling that the Marines would not follow someone who was not of their number, an outsider. At the very least, a substitution of leaders would harm the unit’s effectiveness.”

  “In any case,” an Euler star lord put in, “it’s not a matter of simply choosing whether or not to obey orders. These Marines did volunteer to enter cybernetic stasis in order to serve as a ready reserve…specifically against future incursions by the Enemy.”

  When an Euler used the word translated as “enemy,” it always meant the Xul.

  “This Warrington Initiative he mentioned,” Valoc said. “We know. But the situation has changed. The Xul are no longer a threat. As an elite direct-action force, the Marines are a valuable asset, one to be used.”

  “We can no longer be certain that the Xul are not a threat,” the liaison AI, Socrates, suggested. “The QCC data we’ve just received from the Great Annihilator suggests otherwise.”

  “Flawed data!” Radather, the t-Human representative snapped. “The data are clearly flawed!”

  “Prove that,” Rame told the electronic entity’s virtual avatar. “How would you, an electronic life form, know if the very basis for your own existence had been tampered with by other agencies?”

  “The same applies to Socrates!”

  “Nevertheless, the Annihilator data suggests that our e-networks have to some unknown extent been contaminated by Xul emomemes. The strength of your emotional reaction just now demonstrates that there may be a problem.”

  “And what do you suggest?” a Veldik star lord asked. Its avatar was difficult to see, a confused and turbulent pillar of yellow smoke, within which could be glimpsed unsettling pieces of the being’s organic form as it moved.

  “That we permit the Marines to do what they’re best at,” Rame replied. “We have a target. We have at least the possibility that that target is a threat to the Associative, perhaps to all life throughout our galaxy. I propose that we order General Garroway to neutralize that threat.”

  The debate continued for another hour, but Rame was certain already that he’d won. The transmissions from Recon Zephyr had included recordings of signals emanating from the structure deep within the Great Annihilator that matched odd scraps and pieces of signals recorded elsewhere throughout the Galaxy…most especially in close proximity to black holes and to Star Gates with their paired micro-singularities. Somehow, the Xul were affecting the Associative Net.

  And, somehow, they had to be stopped.

  Garroway’s Office

  Marine Transport Major Samuel Nicholas

  Objective Samar

  1420 hours, GMT

  “The Deep Alien Protocol is running, General.”

  Garroway nestled back a little deeper into his recliner and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Lofty. Put me in.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  And a new world opened up around Garroway.

  There were non-human alien species scattered across the Galaxy…but many, if not the majority, were at least approachable. Apprehensible. Comprehensible in human terms.

  Garroway had met quite a few alien species, even before his long sleep into the future. They might have radically different body shapes and bizarre ways of thinking about themselves and their environment, but a surprisingly large number were carbon-based, with something like peptide chains and amino acids. They tended to utilize the more common elements, the earlier entries on the Periodic Table—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, and others. They tended to use liquid water as a solvent, which meant they lived in a temperature range between zero degrees and one hundred degrees Celsius. They might see the universe in different ways, at different wavelengths or with different senses than those evolved by humans, but they tended to share certain constants—an awareness of their natural surroundings, basic needs such as raw materials for metabolic processes and instincts for survival, reproduction, and the protection of offspring. Most were searching for ways and means of understanding the cosmos, and most had evolved certain basic tools—math, science, and religion—to help them do so. First contact with the deep-sea Eulers had been made on the basis of an exchange of prime numbers, and a mutual understanding of higher mathematics.

  But many others were so truly, so deeply alien that it was difficult at first even to understand them as sentient. In some cases, it was difficult to recognize them as living, to say nothing of being intelligent species with their own language, culture, worldview, and identity of self.

  And even many of the comprehensible species out there lived in environments where direct face-to-whatever meetings were impossible or extremely difficult—the deep-benthic Eulers and Cthuli, for example, or the heat-loving Vorat.

  The Deep Alien Protocol had been developed five centuries earlier as a means of addressing the issue. AIgents created virtual realities within which humans could meet with alien species; massively parallel artificial intelligences were able now to dissect alien computer technologies and protocols and create high-speed electronic bridges with their human analogues, and to do so quickly enough that those using the system were unaware of what was going on behind the scenes. It wasn’t just language that was being translated, but nuances of environment, of culture, or biology, even of history.

  It helped if the alien technology included something like computers and something like virtual simulations. Similarity of purpose in the technologies involved provided clues to the translation.

  Garroway wasn’t entirely certain of what he was getting into as the new world began unfolding around him. An hour ago, a channel had opened on the Fleet’s QCC. AIs had linked through that channel and reported that the Tarantulae were there, that they wanted to talk. No one had yet figured out just how the aliens had acquired that channel, since QCC worked only between comm units that were tuned to one another on a quantum level.

  But no matter how
they’d managed the trick, they appeared to want to talk, and Garroway had volunteered to link in.

  In part, he’d wanted to forestall Rame or the other star lords from getting in here. He knew Rame was now linked in with some sort of high-level electronic conference with the rest of the Associative Conclave, and that they were discussing what to do with Garroway and the First Marine Division.

  Let them talk. The Marines were not going to go liberate Kaleed or any other Associative world. An entire galaxy was too large even for 1MarDiv, and he would not see his people squandered.

  But if the mysterious Tarantulae wanted to talk, he was eager to open that channel. New information was always valuable…as was the potential of a new alliance. He was remembering the history of the first contact with the Eulers, and what that had meant in the Xul War.

  The protocol snapped into place. His office was gone. He seemed now to be out of doors, standing on a beach. It was either early morning or late afternoon; two small suns hung above their sun-dance reflections in the water, one red, one a contrasting green. Overhead, a number of other stars were visible, even though the sky was bright blue with a hint of violet near the zenith. The ocean, for the most part, appeared a deep, red-violet; the ancient phrase of a poet came to mind: “the wine-dark sea….”

  At his feet, what appeared to be seaweed washed up on the black-sand beach was moving. Garroway couldn’t tell if it was animal or plant…or, more likely, something else entirely.

  He looked around, waiting for some manifestation, some presence of the aliens. The world, Garroway knew, was illusory, created inside his head as a virtual meeting place, and how closely it matched reality was anyone’s guess. He wasn’t at all certain of what to expect. The name humans had given to the species, the Tarantulae, called forth images of large, hairy spiders, and it was distinctly possible that the Protocol in effect would create images based on his expectations.

  He hoped that wouldn’t be the case. He didn’t like spiders.

  You are different from the others.

  The words sounded in his mind, uninflected, in precise Anglic.

  “What others would those be?”

  You are different from the ones that called themselves Empire of Dahl.

  “I hope so. I represent an association of many intelligent species. We seek peaceful contact and mutual understanding…not conquest.”

  “As do we.” The words this time were audible, as though spoken just behind Garroway’s head. He jumped and turned, but saw nothing but more beach, masses of purple vegetation that might have been the edge of a jungle and, in the far distance, white, softly sculpted towers that appeared to be buildings or other large structures rising from the forest.

  Oddly, the structures weren’t static, but appeared to be in constant motion, as if they were growing, unfolding, and changing geometries from moment to moment. The changes weren’t fast, but they created the illusion that the structures were alive…or that he was viewing the nanoconstruction of a city through a camera that sped up the motion a thousand-fold.

  The air around him took on a kind of graininess…and then clouds of gold-gleaming dust motes were wafting together in front of him, seeming to emerge from ground and sky and water and light and the very air itself. The motes coalesced into a pillar, then further refined themselves, taking on more detail, more solidity.

  The being had the appearance of a young man—or possibly a young woman. It was hard to tell which, since the features were androgynous and its body was more or less hidden by a thin film of radiance, like the coronae affected by upper-or ruling-class humans. There was a hint of unreality about the being, as though it were somehow still insubstantial; the most powerfully real part of it were the eyes, which were deep, gray-green, and somehow ancient, revealing an apparent age wildly out of keeping with the figure’s youthful appearance.

  “Are you creating that image, Lofty?” Garroway asked. “Or is that what it really looks like?”

  “They are generating the image,” Lofty replied. “It seems unlikely that this is their actual appearance, however.”

  Garroway had to agree. The chances for an alien species to look exactly like a human—even one as ethereal-seeming as this one—were too remote to be even considered as a possibility.

  So the Tarantulae had anticipated the Deep Alien Protocol, and possibly gone it one better. They were presenting themselves as something that looked human, no doubt to avoid possible racial bias against the appearance of the truly alien. That seemed reasonable. The Dahlists reportedly had attacked the Tarantulae, and they might want to smooth over any potential rough spots in their communications with the Associative.

  He wondered, though, what the Tarantulae really looked like. In the back of his mind he was still thinking of giant spiders.

  “You would not understand our true form,” the being said. “In fact, the term itself is misleading. We have no form, as such.”

  “A digital intelligence?” For a moment, he wondered if he might be speaking with the Xul…or with an alien analogue of Homo telae.

  “Suffice it to say,” the glowing being replied, “that we represent a highly distributed intelligence.”

  The alien’s choice of words suggested a computer network…or possibly a CAS, a Complex Adaptive System.

  “Essentially, yes,” the being said, and Garroway realized with a start that it was reading his mind. How? Human cerebral implants allowed a kind of electronic telepathy, but you couldn’t just go snooping around in another person’s thoughts. “Rather than organic cells, like you, we utilize a nanotechnic base.”

  “A true nanotechnic life form,” Lofty whispered in Garroway’s head. “An intelligence distributed among hundreds of trillions of molecule-sized devices that can combine or recombine in nearly infinite configurations. They appear to occupy the entirety of both the organic and nonorganic infrastructures of their worlds, and may reside within stars and in open space as well, with a direct link to the Quantum Sea. They may be technically immortal.”

  Immortal….

  How long had Humankind been chasing that particular dream? Human biological and cybernetic technologies had increased the lifespan of Homo sapiens to a thousand years, at least potentially, and it was unclear how long individuals of Homo telae or Homo superioris might live. There were practical considerations that seemed to place a limit on the survival of hardware in the case of electronic systems, and wetware for organics.

  “So…how did the Dahlists get the jump on you, anyway?” Garroway asked. It was a serious question. A technology this advanced—one able to take on any form at will, with the ability to live forever, with the capacity to draw whatever it needed from the fabric of space itself—didn’t just mean an ability to change shape. An entire civilization built on such technologies would have capabilities that would be nothing short of magic.

  “We’re not sure we know what you mean by ‘get the jump on,’” the being said. “You appear to believe that they attacked us.”

  “Didn’t they? That was the report we had.”

  “They occupied several worlds within our sphere, but, for the most part, we ignored them. They did not seem to be interested in communication.”

  Garroway’s mental imagery of spiders had faded away. Instead, now, he was thinking of ants, of humans as ants in the presence of a human.

  If the human’s bare foot twitched as the ant ran across it, could the ant be said to be engaged in communication with the human? Could the ant understand whatever the human might have to say in reply?

  And on a far deeper level, could the human honestly care what the ant had to say? It occurred to Garroway that the being he was facing in this virtual world might be to him roughly as a man was to an insect. The entity appeared to be speaking with him…but he had the feeling that only a tiny fraction of its mind was actually engaged in that task.

  Beings as powerful as the Tarantulae might well not even notice the activities of mere humans.

  “It’s not
that we can’t notice,” the Tarantulae told him. “We are quite aware now of you and your fleet…as we were aware of the Emperor Dahl and his activities. There is simply little point in such contact. The levels and scopes of our respective technologies are, as you have surmised, vastly different.”

  As if to illustrate the point, the distant forest, the eerily malleable buildings, the black sand and ocean all faded from view. Garroway seemed now to be standing in empty space. The soft glow of the Tarantula Nebula extended in all directions, aswarm with stars like myriad, radiant jewels.

  Nebula and stars appeared as a resplendent backdrop for…structures, geometrical shapes—spheres and spheroids, pyramids and cubes and other shapes less easily defined—that seemed to come and go, popping in and out of existence with no pattern that Garroway could detect. Lines and beams of light appeared to connect many of the structures, shifting and changing as the shapes came and went. There was no way to judge scale. The smallest of those structures might be a hundred meters across and relatively close…or millions of kilometers distant and as massive as a planet.

  Some of those shapes hurt his eyes when he tried to follow their lines and angles and eldritch curves. He was not, he realized, experiencing a conventional three-dimensional geometry.

  “We came out here to rescue you, you know,” Garroway pointed out. “Apparently, though, you didn’t need rescuing.”

  “The gesture is appreciated,” the being said, with something that might have been a human shrug. “And…it is still possible that your species could help us.”

  “How?”

  Ants didn’t help. They were ignored…or they were exterminated.

  “I’m not sure an explanation would help,” the being told him. “There are concepts here literally beyond your ken. I regret the fact that this must seem condescending…but there’s no easy way to express it.”