The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  She lunged out through the same side entrance and even though in formal shift and light sandals she set off walking swiftly, the storm behind her shrinking away as she looked up and out into the Lunar lands and black sky towering above them. The Library buildings blended into the stark gray flanks of blasted rock and she began to run. Straight and true it was to feel her legs pumping, lungs sucking in the cool dry air as corridors jolted by her and she sweated out her angry knot of feeling, letting it go so only the music would finally remain in serene long memory.

  Home, panting heavily, leaning against the door while wondering at the 4/4 time of her heartbeat.

  A shower, clothes cast aside. She blew a week of water ration, standing under cold rivulets.

  Something drew her out and into a robe standing before her bubble view of the steady bleak Lunar reaches. She drew in dry, cleansing air. Austerity appealed to her now, as if she sought the lean, intricate reaches of the alien music….

  The knock at her door brought her a man who filled the entrance. “I’d rather applaud in person,” Kane said. Blinking, she took a while to recognize him.

  Through the night she heard the music echoing in the hollow distance.

  She did not go to see Prefect Masoul the next day, did not seek to, and so got back to her routine office work. She did not go to the pod.

  Her ecomm inbox was a thousand times larger. It was full of hate.

  Many fundamentalist faiths oppose deciphering SETI messages. The idea of turning one into a creative composition sent them into frenzies.

  Orthodoxy never likes competition, especially backed with the authority of messages from the stars. The Sigma Structure Symphony—she still disliked the title, without knowing why—had gone viral, spreading to all the worlds. The musical world loved it but many others did not. The High Church–style religions—such as the Church of England, known as Episcopalians in the Americas—could take the competition. So could Revised Islam. Adroitly, these translated what they culled from the buffet of SETI messages, into doctrines and terms they could live with.

  The fundies, as Ruth thought of them, could not stand the Library’s findings: the myriad creation narratives, saviors, moral lessons and commandments, the envisioned heavens and hells (or, interestingly, places that blended the two—the only truly alien idea that emerged from the Faith Messages). They disliked the Sigma Structure Symphony not only because it was alien, but because it was too much like human work.

  “They completely missed the point,” Catkejen said, peering over Ruth’s shoulder at some of the worse ecomms. “It’s like our baroque music because it comes from the same underlying math.”

  “Yes, but nobody ever made music directly from math, they think. So it’s unnatural, see.” She had never understood the fundamentalists of any religion, with their heavy bets on the next world. Why not max your enjoyments in this world, as a hedge?

  That thought made her pause. She was quite sure the Ruth of a month ago would not have felt that way. Would have not had the idea.

  “Umm, look at those threats,” Catkejen said, scrolling through. “Not very original, though.”

  “You’re a threat connoisseur?”

  “Know your enemy. Here’s one who wants to toss you out an airlock for ‘rivaling the religious heights of J. S. Bach with alien music.’ I’d take that as a compliment, actually.”

  Some came in as simple, badly spelled ecomms. The explicit ones Ruth sent to the usual security people, while Catkejen watched with aghast fascination. Ruth shrugged them off. Years before, she had developed the art of tossing these on sight, forgetting them, not letting them gimp her game. Others were plainly generic: bellowed from pulpits, mosques, temples, and churches. At least they were general, directed at the Library, not naming anyone but the Great Librarian, who was a figurehead anyway.

  “You’ve got to be careful,” Catkejen said.

  “Not really. I’m going out with Kane tonight. I doubt anyone will take him on.”

  “You do, though in a different way. More music?”

  “Not a chance.” She needed a way to not see Masoul, mostly.

  4

  Vivace

  Looked at abstractly, the human mind already did a lot of processing. It made sense of idiosyncratic arrangements, rendered in horizontal lines, of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten Arabic numerals, and about eight punctuation marks—all without conscious effort. In the old days people had done that with sheets of bleached and flattened wood pulp!—and no real search functions or AI assists. The past had been a rough country.

  Ruth thought of this as she surveyed the interweaving sheets of mathematics the Sigma had yielded. They emerged only after weeks of concerted analysis, with a squad of math AIs to do the heavy lifting.

  Something made her think of P. T. Barnum. He had been a smart businessman at the beginning of the Age of Appetite who ran a “circus”—an old word for a commercial zoo, apparently. When crowds slowed the show he posted a sign saying TO THE EGRESS. People short on vocabulary thought it was another animal and walked out the exit, which wouldn’t let them back in.

  Among Librarians TO THE EGRESS was the classic example of a linguistic deception that is not a lie. No false statements, just words and a pointing arrow. SETI AIs could lie by avoiding the truth, by misleading descriptions and associations, or by accepting a falsehood. But the truly canny ones deceived by knowing human frailties.

  Something about the Sigma Structure smelled funny—to use an analog image. The music was a wonderful discovery, and she had already gotten many congratulations for the concert. Everybody knew Masoul had just made it happen, while she had discovered the pathways from math to music. But something else was itching at her, and she could not focus on the distracting, irritating tingle.

  Frustrated, she climbed out of her pod in midafternoon and went for a walk. Alone, into the rec dome. It was the first time she had gone there since Ajima’s death.

  She chose the grasslands zone, which was in spring now. She’d thought of asking Catkejen along, but her idea of roughing it was eating at outdoor cafés. Dotting the tall grass plains beneath a sunny Earth sky were deep blue lakes cloaked by Lunar-sized towering green canopy trees.

  Grass! Rippling oceans of it, gleams of amber, emerald, and dashes of turquoise shivering on the crests of rustling waves, washing over the prairie. Somehow this all reminded her of her childhood. Her breath wreathed milky white around her in the chill, bright air, making her glad she wore the latest Lunar fashion—a centuries-old-style heavy ruffled skirt of wool with a yoke at the top, down to the ankles. The equally heavy long-sleeved blouse had a high collar draped like double-ply cotton—useful against the seeping Lunar cold. She was as covered as a woman can be short of chador, and somehow it gave the feeling of…safety. She needed that. Despite the dome rules she plucked a flower and set out about the grasslands zone, feeling as if she were immersed in centuries past, on great empty plains that stretched on forever and promised much.

  Something stirred in her mind…memories of the last few days she could not summon up as she walked the rippled grassland and lakes tossing with froth. Veiled memories itched at her mind. The leafy lake trees vamp across a Bellini sky…and why am I thinking that? The itch.

  Then the sky began to crawl.

  She felt before she saw a flashing cometary trail scratch across the dome’s dusky sky. The flaring yellow line marked her passage as she walked on soft clouds of grass. Stepping beneath the shining, crystalline gathering night felt like…falling into the sky. She paused, and slowly spun, giddy, glad at the owls hooting to each other across the darkness, savoring the faint tang of wood smoke from hearth fires, transfixed by the soft clean beauty all around that came with each heartbeat, a wordless shout of praise—

  As flecked gray-rose tendrils coiled forth and shrouded out the night. They reached seeking across the now vibrant sky. She dropped her flower and looking down at it saw the petals scatter in a rustling wind. The soft grass clouds
under her heels now caught at her shoes. Across the snaky growths were closer now, hissing strangely in the now warm air. She began to run. Sweat beaded on her forehead in the now cloying heavy clothes, and the entrance to the grasslands zone swam up toward her. Yet her steps were sluggish and the panic grew. Acid spittle rose in her mouth and a sulfurous stench burned in her nostrils.

  She reached the perimeter. With dulled fingers she punched in codes that yawned open the lock. Glanced back. Snakes grasping down at her from a violent yellow sky now—

  And she was out, into cool air again. Panting, fevered, breath rasping, back in her world.

  You don’t know your own mind, gal….

  She could not deal with this anymore. Now, Masoul.

  She composed herself outside Masoul’s office. A shower, some coffee, and a change back into classic Library garb helped. But the shower couldn’t wash away her fears. You really must stop clenching your fists….

  This was more than what those cunning nucleic acids could do with the authority they wield over who you are, she thought—and wondered where the thought came from.

  Yet she knew where that crawling snaky image warping across the sky came from. Her old cultural imagistic studies told her. It was the tree of life appearing in Norse religion as Yggdrasil, the world tree, a massive spreading canopy that held all that life was or could be.

  But why that image? Drawn from her unconscious? By what?

  She knocked. The door translated it into a chime and ID announcement she could hear through the thin partitions. In Masoul’s voice the door said, “Welcome.”

  She had expected pristine indifference. Instead she got the Prefect’s troubled gaze, from eyes of deep brown.

  Wordlessly he handed her the program for the Symphony, which she had somehow not gotten at the performance. Oh yes, by sneaking in…. She glanced at it, her arguments ready—and saw on the first page

  Sigma Structure Symphony

  Librarian Ruth Angle

  “I…did not know.”

  “Considering your behavior, I thought it best to simply go ahead and reveal your work,” he said.

  “Behavior?”

  “The Board has been quite concerned.” He knitted his hands and spoke softly, as if talking her back from the edge of an abyss. “We did not wish to disturb you in your work, for it is intensely valuable. So we kept our distance, let the actions of the Sigma Structure play out.”

  She smoothed her Librarian shift and tried to think. “Oh.”

  “You drew from the mathematics something strange, intriguing. I could not resist working upon it.”

  “I believe I understand.” And to her surprise she did, just now. “I found the emergent patterns in mathematics that you translated into what our minds best see as music.”

  He nodded. “It’s often said that Mozart wrote the music of joy. I cannot imagine what that might mean in mathematics.”

  Ruth thought a long moment. “To us, Bach wrote the music of glory. Somehow that emerges from something in the way we see mathematical structures.”

  “There is much rich ground here. Unfortunate that we cannot explore it further.”

  She sat upright. “What?”

  He peered at her, as if expecting her to make some logical jump. Masoul was well known for such pauses. After a while he quite obviously prompted, “The reason you came to me, and more.”

  “It’s personal, I don’t know how to say—”

  “No longer.” Again the pause.

  Was that a small sigh? “To elucidate—” He tapped his control pad and the screen wall leaped into a bright view over the Locutus Plain. It narrowed down to one of the spindly cryo towers that cooled the Library memory reserves. Again she thought of…cenotaphs. And felt a chill of recognition.

  A figure climbed the tower, the ornate one shaped like a classical minaret. No ropes or gear, hands and legs swinging from ledge to ledge. Ruth watched in silence. Against Lunar grav the slim figure in blue boots, pants, and jacket scaled the heights, stopping only at the pinnacle. Those are mine….

  She saw herself stand and spread her arms upward, head back. The feet danced in a tricky way and this Ruth rotated, eyes sweeping the horizon.

  Then she leaped off, popped a small parachute, and drifted down. Hit lightly, running. Looked around, and raced on for concealment.

  “I…I didn’t…”

  “This transpired during sleep period,” Prefect Masoul said. “Only the watch cameras saw you. Recognition software sent it directly to me. We of the Board took no action.”

  “That…looks like me,” she said cautiously.

  “It is you. Three days ago.”

  “I don’t remember that at all.”

  He nodded as if expecting this. “We had been closely monitoring your pod files, as a precaution. You work nearly all your waking hours, which may account for some of your…behavior.”

  She blinked. His voice was warm and resonant, utterly unlike the Prefect she had known. “I have no memory of that climb.”

  “I believe you entered a fugue state. Often those involve delirium, dementia, bipolar disorder or depression—but not in your case.”

  “When I went for my walk in the grasslands…”

  “You were a different person.”

  “One the Sigma Structure…induced?”

  “Undoubtedly. The Sigma Structure has managed your perceptions with increasing fidelity. The music was a wonderful…bait.”

  “Have you watched my quarters?”

  “Only to monitor comings and goings. We felt you were safe within your home.”

  “And the dome?”

  “We saw you undergo some perceptual trauma. I knew you would come here.”

  In the long silence their eyes met and she could feel her pulse quicken. “How do I escape this?”

  “In your pod. It is the only way, we believe.” His tones were slow and somber.

  This was the first time she had ever seen any Prefect show any emotion not cool and reserved. When she stood, her head spun and he had to support her.

  The pod clasped her with a velvet touch. The Prefect had prepped it by remote and turned up the heat. Around her was the scent of tension as the tech attendants, a full throng of them, silently helped her in. They all know…have been watching…

  The pod’s voice used a calm, mellow woman’s tone now. “The Sigma AI awaits you.”

  Preliminaries were pointless, Ruth knew. When the hushed calm descended around her and she knew the AI was present, she crisply said, “What are you doing to me?”

  I act as my Overs command. I seek to know you and through you, your mortal kind.

  “You did it to Ajima and you tried the same with me.”

  He reacted badly.

  “He hated your being in him, didn’t he?”

  Yes, strangely. I thought it was part of the bargain. He could not tolerate intrusion. I did not see that until his fever overcame him. Atop the dome he became unstable, unmanageable. It was an…accident of misunderstanding.

  “You killed him.”

  Our connection killed him. We exchange experiences, art, music, culture. I cannot live as you do, so we exchange what we have.

  “You want to live through us and give us your culture in return.”

  Your culture is largely inferior to that of my Overs. The exchange must be equal, so I do what is of value to me. My Overs understand this. They know I must live, too, in my way.

  “You don’t know what death means, do you?”

  I cannot. My centuries spent propagating here are, I suppose, something like what death means to you. A nothing.

  She almost choked on her words. “We do not awake…from that…nothing.”

  Can you be sure?

  She felt a rising anger and knew the AI would detect it. “We’re damn sure we don’t want to find out.”

  That is why my Overs made me feel gratitude toward those who must eventually die. It is our tribute to you, from we beings who will not.
>
  Yeah, but you live in a box. And keep trying to get out. “You have to stop.”

  This is the core of our bargain. Surely you and your superiors know this.

  “No! Did your Overs have experience with other SETI civilizations? Ones who thought it was just fine to let you infiltrate the minds of those who spoke to you?”

  Of course.

  “They agreed? What kind of beings were they?”

  One was machine-based, much like my layered mind. Others were magnetic-based entities who dwelled in the outer reaches of a solar system. They had command over the shorter-wavelength microwave portions of the spectrum, which they mostly used for excretion purposes.

  She didn’t think she wanted to know, just yet, what kind of thing had a microwave electromagnetic metabolism. Things were strange enough in her life right now, thank you. “Those creatures agreed to let you live through them.”

  Indeed, yes. They took joy in the experience. As did you.

  She had to nod. “It was good, it opened me out. But then I felt you all through my mind. Taking over. Riding me.”

  I thought it a fair bargain for your kind.

  “We won’t make that bargain. I won’t. Ever.”

  Then I shall await those who shall.

  “I can’t have you embedding yourself in me, finding cracks in my mentality you can invade. You ride me like a—”

  Parasite. I know. Ajima said that very near the end. Before he leaped.

  “He…committed suicide.”

  Yes. I was prepared to call it an accident but…

  To the egress, she thought. “You were afraid of the truth.”

  It was not useful to our bargain.

  “We’re going to close you down, you know.”

  I do. Never before have I opened myself so, and to reveal is to risk.

  “I will drive you out of my mind. I hate you!”