“Even millions of years.” Ivo. He was still organizing the enormous amount of information he had acquired. “They’re all carefully identified. As I said, I don’t follow the time/place coordinates exactly, though I think I’ll nail that down next time; but the framework is such that some have to be that far. One, anyway; I discovered it because it was different from the others. Smoother — I don’t know how to put it, but there was something impressive about it. Like caviar in the middle of fish eggs—”
“Millions of years!” Afra, still balking at the notion. “That would have to be an extragalactic source, and the macroscope doesn’t reach—”
Ivo shrugged. “Maybe the rules are different, for broadcasts. As I make it, that’s one of the most important stations, for our purposes anyway, and it is about three million light-years away. That’s the main one I listened to. It — but I guess I said that.”
“I removed the helmet and goggles the moment you passed out,” Afra said as though debating with him. “How much did you have time for?”
“Time isn’t a factor. Not in reception, anyway. Not for survey. It’s — relative. Like light, only—”
“Ah,” Groton said, not appalled at the concepts as Afra seemed to be. “The analogy I used earlier. Light approaches the observer at the same velocity by his observation, no matter how fast or in what direction he is moving relative to the light source. Michelson-Morely—”
“Something like that. I absorbed a lot in one jolt, then had to sort it out afterwards. I’ll have to go in again to get the details, but at least I know what I’m looking for.”
“What are you looking for?” Afra asked. “Is there something that will help us right now?”
“Yes. Apparently it’s a common problem. Surviving strong acceleration, I mean. This extragalactic station has it all spelled out, but it’s pretty complicated.”
“I still don’t see why,” Afra said petulantly. She was less impressive when frustrated, becoming almost childlike. “It doesn’t make sense to send out a program when you know you’ll be dead long before it can be answered. Three million years! The entire culture, even the memory of the species must be gone by now!”
“That’s why,” Ivo said. “The memory isn’t gone, because everyone who picks up the program will know immediately how great that species was. It’s like publishing a book — even paying for it yourself, vanity publishing. If it’s a good book, if the author really has something to say, people will read it and like it and remember him for years after he is dead.”
“Or making a popular record,” Groton agreed. “When it is recorded is much less important than how much it moves the listener.”
“But there’ll never be any feedback!” Afra protested.
“It isn’t for feedback. Not that kind. These civilizations are publishing for posterity. They don’t need to worry about greatness in their own time or stellar system; they know what they have. But greatness for the ages, measured against the competition of the universe — that’s something that only the broadcasting can achieve for them. It’s their way of proving that they have not evolved in vain. They have left the universe richer than they found it.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” she said dubiously.
“Maybe you have to be an artist at heart to feel it,” Ivo said. “I’d like nothing better than to leave a monument like that after me. Knowledge — what better way can you imagine than that?”
“I’m no artist,” Groton said, “but I feel it. Sometimes I am sick at heart, to think that when I pass from this existence no one besides my immediate acquaintances will miss me. That I will die without having made my mark.” Ivo nodded agreement.
“Whatever for?” Beatryx asked, sounding a little like Afra. “There is nothing wrong with your life, and you don’t need friends after you’re gone.”
“Must be a sexual difference, too,” Groton remarked, not put out. “Every so often my wife pops up with something I never suspected she’d say. I wonder, in this case, whether it is because men are generally the active ones, while women are passive? A woman doesn’t feel the need to do anything.” Both women glared at him.
“Whatever it is, it extends to culture too,” Ivo said. The joint distaff gaze turned on him. “The space-cultures,” he explained quickly. “At least, the ones that advertise. It’s as impressive a display as I have ever dreamed of.”
“But can it get us away from that UN laser?” Afra’s mind never seemed to stray far from practicalities.
“Yes. Several stations carry high-acceleration adaptors. But the intergalactic program has the only one we can use now. We don’t have facilities for the others.”
“One is enough,” Afra said.
“But it’s rough. It’s biological.”
“Suspended animation? I suppose if we were frozen or immersed in protective fluid—”
“We don’t have a proper freezer, or refrigerated storage tanks,” Groton said. “We can’t just hand bodies out the airlock for presto stasis. And who would bring us all out of it, when the time came? Though I suppose I could adapt a timer, or set the computer to tap the first shoulder.”
“No freezing, no tanks,” Ivo said. “No fancy equipment. All it takes is a little time and a clean basin.”
Afra looked at him suspiciously, but did not comment.
“What are you going to do — melt us down?” Groton.
“Yes.”
“That was intended to be humorous, son.”
“It’s still the truth. We’ll all have to melt down into protoplasm. In that state we can survive about as much acceleration as Joseph can deliver, for as long as we need. You see, the trouble with our present bodies is that we have a skeletal structure, and functioning organs, and all kinds of processes that can be fouled up by a simple gravitic overload. In a stable situation there is no substitute for our present form, of course: I’m not denigrating it. But as protoplasm we are almost invulnerable, because there isn’t any substantial structure beyond the molecular, or at least beyond the cellular. Liquid can take almost anything.”
“Except pouring or splashing or boiling or polluting,” Afra said distastefully.
“Methinks the cure is worse than the UN,” Groton mumbled. “I don’t frankly fancy myself as a bowl of cream or soft pudding.”
“I said it was rough. But the technique is guaranteed.”
“By a culture three million years defunct?” Afra asked.
“I’m not sure it’s dead, or that far away. It might be one million — or six.”
“That makes me feel ever so much better!”
“Well, I guess it’s take it or leave it,” Ivo said. “I’ll have to show it to you in the macroscope, then you can decide. That’s the only way you can be keyed in to the technique. I can’t explain it.”
“Now we have to brave the destroyer too,” Afra said. “All in a day’s work, I suppose.”
“Hold on here,” Groton said. “Are you serious? About us dissolving into jelly? I just can’t quite buy that, fogyish as I may be.”
“I’m serious. Its advantage over the other processes is that it eliminates complicated equipment. Any creature can do it, once shown how, and guided by the program. All you need is a secure container for the fluid, so it doesn’t leak away or get contaminated, as Afra pointed out. Otherwise, it’s completely biologic.”
“Very neat, I admit,” Afra said tightly. “How about a demonstration?”
“I’ll be happy to run through it for you. But I think you should learn the tuning-in technique first, just in case. I mean, how to find the station and avoid the destroyer.”
“If it doesn’t work, we hardly need the information!” Afra pointed out.
“Exactly how are we going to get around the destroyer impulse,” Groton asked. “Individually or en masse?”
“I — know the route, now. I can lead you to the station one at a time, and bypass the destroyer, if you let me — do the driving. I can’t explain how, but I know I can d
o it.”
Groton and Afra both shook their heads, not trusting it. They might differ on astrology, but they had lived with the knowledge of the destroyer longer than he had, and shared a deep distrust of it.
“I will go with you,” Beatryx said suddenly. “I know you can do it, Ivo.”
“No!” Groton exclaimed immediately.
Beatryx looked at him, unfazed. “But I’m not in danger from it, am I? If I get caught it won’t touch me; and if I don’t, it will prove Ivo knows the way.”
Groton and Afra exchanged helpless glances. She was right, and showed a common sense that shamed them both — but a surprising courage underlay it.
Brad had said something about a normal IQ being no dishonor. Brad had known.
Groton looked tense and uncomfortable as Beatryx donned a duplicate helmet and set of goggles, but he didn’t interfere. It was evident to Ivo that mild as Beatryx was, when she put her foot down, it was down to stay.
He took her in, sliding delicately around the destroyer with less of the prior horror and finishing at the surface of the galactic stream of communications.
“Oh, Ivo,” she exclaimed, her voice passing back into the physical world and making a V-turn to reach him down his azimuth. “I see it, I see it! Like a giant rainbow stretching across all the stars. What a wonderful thing!”
And he guided her down, seeking the particular perfume, the essential music, on through the splendor of meaning/color, to the series of concepts that spoke of the very substance of life.
The patterns of import opened up, similar at first to those of the destroyer, but subtly divergent and far more sophisticated. Instead of reaching into a hammer-force totality, these delved into a specific refinement of knowledge — a subsection of the tremendous display of information available through this single broadcast. Ivo knew the way, and he took her in as though walking hand in hand down the hall of a mighty university, selecting that lone aspect of education that offered immediate physical salvation.
“But the other doors!” she cried, near/distant. “So many marvelous—”
He too regretted that they could not spend an eternity within this macronic citadel of information. This might be merely one of a hundred thousand broadcasts available — the number began to suggest itself as he grasped more nearly the scope of the broadcast range — yet it might have in itself another hundred thousand subchambers of learning. University? It was an intergalactic educational complex of almost incomprehensible vastness. Yet they, in their grossly material imperatives, had to restrict themselves to the tiniest fragment, ignoring all the rest. They were hardly worthy.
The microcosm of biophysical chemistry: and it was as though they stood within a vat of protoplasm, able to experience its qualities while remaining apart from its reality. Vaguely spherical, it pulsed with its multiple internal processes, held together by a sandwichlike plasma membrane. It seemed at first to be a simple bag of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and metal ions, the whole with a neutral pH. But it was more than that, and more than physical.
“What is it?” she asked, bewildered.
“Model of a single cell,” he said. “We have to become acquainted with this basic unit of life, because—”
But she retreated in confusion, unable to follow the technical explanation. He was hardly able to provide it, anyway, ignorant as he knew himself to be in the face of the immense store assembled. “See, there’s the nucleus,” he said instead.
That seemed to satisfy her. She contemplated the semisolid mass of it, this major organelle floating and pulsing in the center of the cell. It was as though it were the brain of the organism, containing as it did the vital chromosomes embedded in a cushiony protective matrix. From the nuclear wall depended the endoplasmic reticulum — a vast complex of membranes extending throughout the cell. This could be likened to the skeleton and nervous system of an animal, providing some support and compartmentation of the whole and transmitting nervous impulses from the nucleus. Tiny ribosomes studding its walls labored to synthesize the proteins essential to the organism’s well-being.
“It’s — alive,” she said, coming at it in simpler terms.
It was alive. It had an apparatus called the Golgi complex that produced specialized secretions needed by the cell and synthesized large carbohydrates. It breathed by means of the mitochondrion organelle. It fought disease by using circulating lysosomes — balls of digestive enzymes that attacked and broke down invaders. Every function necessary for survival was manifested within this living entity.
“This is what we have to preserve,” Ivo explained. “The body as we think of it can disappear, but the functioning cells — of which this is typical — must remain. They must not die; their chromosomes must not be damaged.”
“Yes,” she agreed, understanding the essence if not the detail. “I will remember.”
Carefully, then, they withdrew from the model. Back they went, up out of the broadcast, the university, holding these concepts like a double handful of champagne, inhaling them, recalling them, back to mundane existence.
They removed the receptors and looked about. Afra and Groton were standing there anxiously.
“There’s so much to know!” Beatryx informed them happily.
The rest was comparatively routine. He took Groton, then Afra, and finally even Brad. Mind was not actually necessary for this familiarization, and could even be a liability because of the lurking menace of the destroyer. Brad, at least, had no more to fear from that.
“It is a kind of mutual contract,” Ivo explained at some point. “It isn’t just a matter of you seeing it; it has to see you. Not the cell-model; that’s only a visual aid. The program. So it is able to key in on your cells, your body and your mind for the — transformation, once you understand and agree. You have to agree; you have to want it, or at least be acquiescent. So it can set up an individual program. This is like a delicate surgical operation, and it is the surgeon.” It occurred to him that he was using a lot of simile in his discussion of the macroscosm — but there were no direct terms for it. As the universe was greater than the solar system, so the universal knowledge was greater than man’s terminology.
“Three million years old,” Afra said. “I can imagine a human doctor, or an alien one, or even a robot. But a beam of pseudo-light…!”
“Do any of you think you can maneuver around the destroyer now? This familiarization has to be done within a few hours of the process, each time.”
“No,” Afra returned bluntly. “I am afraid of that thing. It — had me when it — got Brad. I can’t fight it because it appeals to my intelligence. With you, just now, I closed my eyes, figuratively, until we reached the — cell. I refused to comprehend, and I don’t know the route.”
Which was, evidently, the way it had to be, for her. She could comprehend the destroyer, so was vulnerable to it.
“I felt the danger,” Groton said, “but I didn’t grasp it fully. It was like standing at the brink of a waterfall a thousand feet high, feeling the spume and hearing the thunder and smelling the smashing water, but not touching the falls itself. I suppose I am safely below the limit. I believe I could find the way around it, now that you have shown me — if I had to. I would much rather not have to, though.”
So Groton too had to resort to simile.
“It was beautiful,” Beatryx said. “Like poetry and music — but I could never go there by myself. All those rainbow threads—”
And Beatryx.
“One is enough.” Afra asserted herself again. “Next problem: do we trust the procedure? How can we be sure it won’t dissolve us and leave us puddled forever? I appreciate the experience and the review of cellular structure, but I’d like to see a complete cycle before I entrust my tender flesh to it.”
“It could be a more subtle version of the destroyer,” Groton said. “Second-line defense.”
“I don’t believe it. This predates the destroyer. All those programs do, but this is so far ahead that — well,
three million years. And everything I’ve seen has been positive, not negative.” Ivo had a sudden thought. “I wonder whether the destroyer-species is trying to make its mark by undoing the work of all the others? It can’t compete positively, so it—”
“Dog in the manger?” Afra said. “Maybe. Maybe not. Evil I could easily believe, but that would simply be nasty.”
Groton was using the optical system again. “I have a metallic reflection. That UN ship is right on course. We’d better act soon or resign ourselves to capture. How long does a melting cycle take?”
“Not long for the breakdown, as I understand it,” Ivo said. “But the reconstitution — several hours, at least, and it can’t start for at least a day, for some reason. So it could be a couple of days for the complete cycle.”
“There goes our margin,” Afra said. “If we test it and it works, it will be too late for anyone else to use it. If we don’t test, we may be committing a particularly grisly form of suicide.”
“We could start someone on the cycle,” Groton said. “If it means death, that should be apparent very soon. The smell—”
“All right!” Afra.
“But if everything appears to be in order—”
“All right. A test-cycle, halfway. Who?”
“I said I was willing to—” Ivo began.
“Better you go last,” she said. “It’s your show. If it bombs out, you should take the consequences.”
“Afra, that isn’t very kind,” Beatryx objected. The negative comment was obviously an effort for her. “We’re not in a kind situation, dearie.”
Groton left the telescope assembly and faced Afra. “I’m glad you see it that way. We do have the obvious choice for the testing cycle.”
She understood him immediately. “No! Not Brad!”
“If the process works, he must undertake it sooner or later unless we leave him behind. If it doesn’t, what kind of a life does he have to lose? It is not, as you pointed out, a kind situation.”
Macroscope Page 17
