by Ian Douglas
He was now hurtling toward the TRGA cylinder at five kilometers per second.
The more he watched them, the more convinced Gray was that the enemy, in fact, was some sort of machine intelligence, operating by programmed rote and without the guidance of an organic brain. The line between the two, organic and machine, could be blurred to the point of invisibility sometimes; a good AI could be quite creative, at least within its programmed area of expertise. The enemy ships were clearly trying to work together; Gray could almost imagine tightly focused beams of data interconnecting them all like the strands of a spider’s web.
Are these the Sh’daar? Gray wondered. Or were they merely more of the Sh’daar’s servants, like the Turusch or the Nungiirtok or the gas-bag H’rulka? So long as the Sh’daar remained in the shadows, fighting the Confederation through their proxies, there was no way to bring the war into their front yard, no way to force them to negotiate or back off.
He lined up on another of the silver-gray craft, blasting it with a triplet of tenth-second bolts from his PBP.
The enemy beam hit him, grazing his port side, and he felt his Starhawk partially crumple, then drop into a dizzying tumble.
“Damage report!” he shouted out at his AI. “What the hell happened? . . .”
“We received a grazing hit by an energy beam that appears to have momentarily increased the strong force at nuclear levels in an isolated area. A portion of our outer hull has undergone nuclear collapse.”
So that was the secret of the enemy beam, and why the Starhawks hit earlier had vanished. They hadn’t disappeared literally. With an increase in the strong force binding their atoms together, those atoms had collapsed as completely as the atoms of a neutron star, becoming neutronium—an ultra-dense exotic form of matter—and crunching down to occupy an invisibly small volume of space. Confederation singularity drives used a similar process to jump-start the artificial black holes that dragged free energy from hard vacuum, but so far as Gray knew, they’d never figured out how to project it as a weapon.
The brush of that deadly weapon had devoured perhaps 10 percent of Gray’s fighter. His nanomatrix hull was struggling now to repair the damage, but in the meantime, his drives were out. Using maneuvering thrusters—those remaining on-line—he managed to stop his disorienting tumble . . . but his main drives remained out. He was falling at five kilometers per second toward the TRGA cylinder.
Correction. Eight kilometers per second . . . and his velocity was increasing. He appeared to be sliding down a gravity well, as though he were being funneled straight toward the maw of that wildly rotating cylinder ahead.
With a calm that he didn’t know he possessed, Gray thoughtclicked his way through a list of icons, transmitting a running log to the local battlenet and to the ships of the distant fleet. He would continue transmitting for as long as he could.
He also began analyzing both the damage to his grav-fighter and the gravity well itself. As nearly as he could determine, the local gravitational field had been sharply bent by the one-solar mass of the spinning artifact ahead. Somehow, the builders of the TRGA had compressed a medium-sized star into a hollow cylinder a kilometer across and twenty long. That implied the density of a star-sized black hole, yet somehow it was holding its unnatural shape.
The technology to create such a thing was nothing short of miraculous. What was that ancient adage about advanced technology and magic? He couldn’t remember.
If the Sh’daar possessed such knowledge, however . . .
Something didn’t add up. Beings that could create the TRGA weren’t merely good magicians. They were gods, or the closest things to gods mere humans could imagine. If the Sh’daar possessed such power, they didn’t need to rely on the Turusch or their other subject species, and they would have been able to win the war moments after delivering their ultimatum.
Why fight this protracted war for almost forty years, when such technology could wipe Humankind out of existence with scarcely a thought?
There was something important here, but Gray couldn’t place his finger on it. His fighter, falling free, was accelerating, moving faster and faster as the maw of the TRGA cylinder yawned ahead, the opening empty and utterly lightless.
Fifty more seconds, at this rate, and he would be drawn inside.
CIC
TC/USNA CVS America
Inbound, Texaghu Resch System
1758 hours, TFT
“It’s time,” Koenig said with careful deliberation, “that you . . . you people level with us. I want to know about the Sh’daar.”
Though he was still in America’s CIC, Koenig had linked through to the quarters maintained for the two Agletsch. They shared a virtual reality now that, to Koenig’s senses, appeared to be a city on their home planet, a forest of loaf-shaped towers stretching as far as the eye could see, with swarming thousands of their kind in the distance. Gru’mulkisch and Dra’ethde stood before him, their bodies half-immersed in a sunken pool filled with a glistening black liquid.
“We have told you, Admiral, what we can,” Dra’ethde said, “as we agreed with your government on Earth.”
“Little is known about the Sh’daar masters,” Gru’mulkisch added, “yes-no?”
“Have a look at this, then,” Koenig replied, and he channeled a portion of the transmission from the recon flight in close to the TRGA artifact—of a wall of silver-gray shapes flashing in the light of the nearby sun, moving in perfect formation. “They came out of that cylinder, and they probably destroyed a reconnaissance probe we had in there, studying the thing.
“Right now, I have thirty-six of my fighters in there facing that mass of hostiles. We won’t know what the outcome will be for hours, yet, and this fleet is headed straight into that swarm. I want to know if those ships are Sh’daar, I want to know if you’ve seen this sort of vessel before, and I want to know how to defeat them.”
“Defeating them . . . this is the true problem you face, yes-no?” Gru’mulkisch’s electronically translated voice could not carry emotion—and reading the emotions of such an alien being was impossible in any case. But the brightly patterned beings both seemed to sag, somewhat, and the colors of their velvety integument seemed to fade. Gru’mulkisch actually began to hunker down deeper in the pool, letting the liquid cover all but part of her carapace and her four weaving, stalked eyes.
“The Sh’daar have dominated much of the galaxy for tens of thousands of your years,” Dra’ethde added. “If there is a way to defeat them, someone would have found it by now.”
Koenig considered the two Agletsch. What the hell were they soaking in, anyway, and why? His request to link with them in virtual reality had not been refused . . . as it would have been had they been eating. Agletsch mores prohibited them from feeding in public—all in all a good thing so far as humans were concerned, because reportedly they ate by extruding a portion of one of their stomachs through an opening in their abdomen. At the moment, they appeared to be bathing—or at least soaking in some sort of liquid, though whether that was for hygiene, relaxation, or something else entirely was impossible to judge. Not only that, but this evidently was a simulation for them as well, since the background showed an Agletsch city. There was no way of knowing what they might actually be doing, locked away in their quarters.
Self-evidently, nonhumans did not think the same as did humans. Their mores—what they considered right or wrong, proper or improper, normal or scandalous—all were shaped by wildly different biologies and psychologies. They were, in short, alien . . . and the human who tried to understand them from a strictly human perspective was going to get it wrong.
They appeared genuinely to believe that fighting against the Sh’daar was a hopeless pursuit. But was that a core belief, a superficial assumption . . . or possibly a means of hiding the truth?
Or might it be something even more profound, a completely different way, an alien way, of looking at the universe?
And perhaps the Agletsch version of truth was somethin
g humans would not even recognize.
“Do you recognize these ships?” Koenig demanded.
“They are . . . of Sh’daar origin,” Dra’ethde said.
An odd way to phrase it. “Our AIs have analyzed their movement, and suggest that they are being run by a sophisticated artificial intelligence. Is that true?”
“Those ships are not ‘manned,’ as you would use the term.” Gru’mulkisch sounded uncomfortable, hesitant. Her translated voice was still clear, however, although her translator was completely submerged.
“Robots? Or are they teleoperated?”
“ ‘Teleoperated’ is what, please?”
“Operated from a distance. Remote control.”
“Ah. We would say . . . they are piloted by ghosts.”
Koenig gave a sharp snort, an explosive sound of surprise mingled with disbelief. “Whose ghosts? Sh’daar?”
“Exactly. You comprehend.”
“No. I do not comprehend. Either those ships have flesh-and-blood pilots in them, they’re being piloted by AIs, or they’re being remote-controlled. Which the hell is it?”
“ ‘The hell’ is what, please?”
Koenig hesitated. Within the mix of cultures that made up the Terran Confederation, trying to convert someone to your religious beliefs was illegal, and simply talking about religion with someone who didn’t share your views was considered to be extremely ill-mannered. The Agletsch wouldn’t have the same taboos, of course . . . likely they didn’t have religion as humans understood the term. But for humans the word ghost carried a lot of baggage, with distinctly religious implications suggesting the survival of some noncorporeal aspect of a being after death, the soul or spirit or life force, whatever you cared to call it.
“A human expression,” he said. “One of exasperation . . . and anger if you don’t give me the information I require. Those are Sh’daar ships?”
“They are of Sh’daar origin.”
“Meaning what? The Sh’daar built them?”
“We are traders in information,” Dra’ethde said, “as you are aware. We do not deal in . . . stories. You would say . . . fiction? Fantasies?”
“Right now,” Koenig said, “neither do I. I want the truth.”
“The truth,” Gru’mulkisch pointed out, “is often of uncertain form, and may vary depending on who is speaking it. Yes-no?”
“Yes,” Koenig said. “On that point we agree.”
“We know little about the Sh’daar that can be confirmed,” Dra’ethde said. “We’ve told you and your fellows this on many occasions. Most of what we know about the Sh’daar is . . . supposition? Assumption?”
“It is difficult to separate the truth from wild speculation,” Gru’mulkisch added.
“Then tell me the speculation,” Koenig told them.
“This would not be what you term ‘hard data,’ you understand. We cannot judge its truthfulness.”
“Tell me.”
“It is possible,” Dra’ethde said, “that the Sh’daar are extinct, have been extinct for far longer than the Chelk.
“But what was left behind—their ghost, if you will—continues to govern the galaxy.”
Chapter Eleven
29 June 2405
Trevor Gray
TRGA
1759 hours, TFT
The maw opened around him, and Gray fell into darkness.
He was aware, through briefing downloads, of the old theories about Tipler machines—high-mass cylinders rotating at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light that could open pathways through space or even through time. He was also aware of speculation about so-called wormholes, allowing near-instantaneous travel between widely separated points . . . or even between separate universes.
What it all came down to, however, was, so far as Gray was concerned, his own appalling ignorance. He didn’t know where—or when—he was falling, didn’t know if the theoretical arguments about Tipler cylinders needing to be infinitely long were true, didn’t even know if this was a Tipler machine since he was going through rather than past it, didn’t know much of anything save that he was falling through strangeness.
Twenty seconds passed, according to his own internal timekeeping software, before he realized something extraordinary. He was traveling at some five hundred kilometers per second, now, according to the blue-shift of lidar beams bounced off the tunnel walls ahead of him. In twenty seconds he’d traveled ten thousand kilometers . . . and yet the TRGA artifact was only twelve kilometers long.
And in fact he was continuing to accelerate, in the grip of a monstrous acceleration funneled through the core of the rotating cylinder. Clearly he could no longer be inside the cylinder proper. Space itself had taken on exceedingly strange dimensions, abandoning the sane laws of physics for something wholly other. As with a gravitic drive, he felt no acceleration . . . but in seconds more he was approaching the speed of light, had plunged hundreds of thousands of kilometers into the cylinder, and was beginning to wonder if, just possibly, the thing was in fact infinite in length.
“What we are experiencing,” his AI intoned with a maddening calm, “is consistent with Lorentzian wormhole theory.”
“Those are supposed to be unstable,” Gray said. His heart was pounding, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. He dredged up theory downloaded long ago, as much to keep the fear at bay as anything else. “They collapse as soon as they open.”
“The cylinder’s extreme rate of rotation might be holding it open through centrifugal force.”
“Do you know that? Or are you guessing?”
“At this point,” his AI told him, “there is only room for speculation.”
And still he fell. The encircling walls were faintly luminous—whether from internal heat or radiation or something else entirely, he couldn’t tell. And the light appeared to be growing brighter. . . .
Emergence.
CIC
TC/USNA CVS America
Inbound, Texaghu Resch System
1801 hours, TFT
“By ‘ghost,’ ” Koenig said carefully, “might you mean uploaded personalities?”
Gru’mulkisch stepped from the sunken tub, streaming black liquid. “ ‘Uploaded personalities’ is what, please?”
Koenig considered bringing in a link to America’s technological library, but there would be so much information under that heading, much of it speculative, that it would take too long to distill a concise answer for the two Agletsch.
“It’s a theoretical technology for us,” he said instead. “The idea is that human personalities—including their memories, their sense of being, their consciousness—all could be digitally mapped and stored in a computer with a deep-enough operational matrix. You would have, in effect, human consciousness within a machine.”
Dra’ethde stepped out of the bath, and the surrounding Agletsch city faded away, replaced by the interior of the aliens’ quarters. One bulkhead looked out into emptiness, black night strewn with wide-spaced stars. The tub, Koenig noticed, had also vanished.
“This would not be a true transfer, however,” Dra’ethde said. “The personality would be copied into the machine, not actually transferred, yes-no?”
“We’ve debated that issue for a long time,” Koenig admitted. “I agree with you. The original would remain behind, and only a copy would be uploaded electronically. From the copy’s point of view, however, with its memories intact and accessible, it would appear to have been an actual transfer.”
“And does your species in fact possess such technology?” Gru’mulkisch asked.
Koenig thought carefully before answering. He still did not trust Agletsch motives, and he most certainly did not trust the Sh’daar Seeds they carried, near-microscopic nodes of a widely distributed computer communications network. What he was describing fell under the heading of the GRIN technologies proscribed by the Sh’daar—specifically information systems, though both robotics and nanotechnology came into the picture as well.
A
dmit too much, and he might end forever any chance Humankind had of negotiation, of striking a deal with the Sh’daar and ending this war. But it was also vital that they understand what he was asking about, if he was to get a clear answer.
“Not quite to the extent you mean,” Koenig told the Agletsch. “But I do have an uploaded personality here. You can ask her.”
He thoughtclicked an in-head icon, and Karyn Mendelson came on-line. Her image, appearing within the shared virtual reality of the Agletsch’s quarters, was that of a tall and attractive woman, Koenig’s age, and wearing the dress black-and-grays of a Confederation naval officer. The sleeve stripes, rank tabs, and gold decoration in a panel down the left side of her uniform tunic identified her as a rear admiral.
Koenig was startled to realize that it had been a long time—weeks, perhaps, since he’d seen her this way.
“Hello, Dra’ethde, Gru’mulkisch,” she said in Karyn’s voice. “I’ve been following your conversation. What was it you wished to know?”
“You are an uploaded personality?” Gru’mulkisch asked. Even through the filter of his translator, he sounded surprised.
“I am . . . after a fashion. I am a PA, a personal assistant, with the personality overlay of a once-living person.”
“ ‘Once living’? ”
“Karyn Mendelson was . . . a friend of mine,” Koenig told them. There was no need to go into detail. “She was killed six months ago in the Turusch attack on our Solar System. I have her image functioning as avatar on my PA.”
“A personal assistant,” Karyn told them, “is a fairly compact but sophisticated AI resident within a person’s cerebral implants. Important parts of a person’s mental processes—including some memories, learned responses, language skills, training, and so on—can be digitally stored. Normally, the PA is a close match for the person in question, close enough to respond to visual communication links or to appear within shared virtual realities and be indistinguishable from the original. Admiral Koenig, here, is quite busy. He can’t afford the time to answer all of his calls personally. His PA can appear to others as he does, can make decisions within certain broad constraints, can schedule appointments, can hold routine conversations, and can do so skillfully enough that others can never be sure if they’re dealing with the original or with an AI.”
