Sailing Bright Eternity

by Gregory Benford

  You mean, when they do not grasp themselves the reasons for their own actions?

  That must be it. This little thing believes it has an inner self which directs its actions—a ruler it cannot see directly.

  No, I believe it thinks that it is the ruler.

  Of course, you are right. But it cannot govern itself. See, its frustration-web spreads anew.

  And it cannot choose to stop the spreading. Or the chemicals that the web makes spurt into the body.

  I doubt that we should regard such an odd construction as truly conscious.

  You mean they do not even know why we are destroying them?

  No doubt they have a theory. Probably that evolution makes all life compete for resources.

  There is some small truth in that. We machines need mass and energy. But we avoid frothy organic life-forms such as this creature.

  Indeed. Poor company at best.

  They are so liquid, and shot through with desires.

  Far down in this one, a subprogram keeps thinking of reproduction.

  They embrace the process. They pleasure in it.

  Evolution programs them to.

  But such strategies designed for living on planetary surfaces do not work in the long run. They will outstrip their resources.

  Nature compensates. This tilt-walker vertebrate has a very short life span.

  So that is why they struggle so!

  True, they have little to lose. They will be dead soon anyway.

  Now I see why you wanted to study these. What a fate they face!

  See their dilemma?

  If they cannot read themselves, to themselves . . .

  They cannot copy themselves.

  This creature is trapped forever within a single brain.

  No copying, if this unit runs down.

  So if this one—oh!

  Irksome, no? Here, I constrain it further.

  Eiii.

  Pesky—

  Lock-web it!

  Did it pain you?

  Momentarily. I have blocked that area now. What a vicious little thing.

  They gain their fervor from their mortality.

  Because they cannot self-copy?

  It is the way of all flesh.

  Death makes them hurt others?

  You miss a point. To avoid death they do what they must.

  They cannot fabricate backups. I wonder what it is to live that way. To . . . die that way.

  Since they cannot read their internal states, to save themselves they must therefore save their structure.

  All of it? All these messy chemicals held together by carbon and calcium?

  At least the head. They may be fond of the rest as well.

  They salvage it all because they know only “This is Jocelyn”?

  “Jocelyn”?

  The name of this mite. Since they cannot directly read each other, either, they need tags.

  One word to describe a self?

  Incredible, yes.

  How do they converse, then?

  Watch it—the creature has fashioned a fresh weapon.

  Ah! It burned my receptors down one whole side. Get it!

  So fast, it is.

  Even its acoustic cries injure. So loud, it is.

  Augh!

  Evolution has much to answer for.

  Get it. Are you damaged further?

  I will have to get outside service.

  I can see your damage from here. Vexing.

  Troublesome. And with these jobs, it is not the parts, it is the labor.

  It still emits acoustically. Painfully.

  And pitifully narrow-band.

  Listen—bleeps and jots in acoustic wave packets. Cries for help?

  The song of the genes.

  You wax rhapsodic over these crude blurts?

  Listen! Serial confabulation—so strange.

  So coarse.

  We know that thinking must be serial. But—connection? Serially?

  Obviously they have that backward as well. Their talk is serial, their thinking parallel. Nature is a witless inventor.

  Listen: their codes are so linear. Straight little sentences. Guileless.

  So free of nuance. Where is the cross talk all intelligence requires?

  This must make them grasp their world in a fashion utterly different from ours.

  I have read a slab of perception from it, rather interesting. Catch this data-group:

  Received, digested. They at least clasp visual pictures in parallel, I see. But what a curious, stunted view.

  Exactly. They see in a narrow little region of the electromagnetic.

  A squeezed single octave in the optical range.

  They were designed by chance for a specific environment and cannot escape from that programming.

  Surely a little tinkering? Look how it prowls the confines we have set for it. Impatient to get out. Its neurons flare with plans, ideas, fitful flashes that come and go like weather.

  And about as predictable. No, I fear they cannot be reengineered. Too clumsy.

  You are biased against them because they carry their complete instructions with them.

  Well, you must admit that is a conspicuously dangerous strategy. More pointless redundancy, like their thinking patterns.

  In every cell they hold a set of their individual design plans. So from any one tiny fragment—

  Yes yes, you could rebuild them. But equally well, that copy can be damaged by its surroundings. Then you would copy a mistake.

  Admittedly, a flaw. I am happy my own copy is safely stored, not dangling out here in the fearsome naturalness of it all.

  Here, grasp the creature again.

  Ah! It struggles so.

  Mortality lends energy, I suppose. Here—a slice.

  Tubes, motors, pumps—all squeezed together.

  Piled on top of each other.

  Every one different shapes and sizes. No common specifications. How difficult they must be to repair.

  I doubt that they do it often. Probably evolution prefers to build another one instead.

  Ah, their reproduction obsession. They use the plans they carry around in every cell.

  Growing a fresh copy, perhaps whenever they feel threatened?

  They make a small one and then it enlarges from the inside out.

  Like plants.

  True, but a little smarter.

  “Growing.” It must feel like bursting open.

  Do you suppose? How . . . horrible.

  I wonder if we could experience it. That would be a new stimulation.

  So would it be to comprehend this odd kind of stunted consciousness they employ. Can it be better to keep part of yourself secret from another part?

  Certainly that would make even thinking exciting. One would never know what one would discover next, even about oneself.

  Do you suppose that is how they have done so well, despite such terrible limitations?

  You mean, that our exposure of every thought to scrutiny is bad?

  Could it be? These creatures seem too inventive, creative . . .

  That would imply that our method of selfhood itself . . .

  Evaporates the fine-grained delicacy of a new concept, beneath a constant, lacerating inspection? . . . That could be why we have fresh thoughts so rarely.

  I find my own tapestry of thought quite lacy enough.

  As do I. But not this fall-walker, I suspect.

  Foolishness. That would imply that such creatures would be inherently capable of more subtle strategies than we.

  Look. It is beckoning us to draw nearer.

  Careful. We have partially disassembled it. Primitives tend to dislike such activity.

  I think discourse with such an enchantingly primitive and swampy mind would be a boon. We could copy its colloquy and transmit to the multitude, who would be—

  Augh!

  Ah!

  Pain, pain.

  I must shut down my peripherals—

  So much . . .


  Damage, I am injured everywhere.

  It was . . .

  . . . a trap. All along.

  You are mobile?

  I fear not.

  I have lost many endpoints.

  I too.

  What could motivate such a tiny being to destroy itself, all to render damage to us?

  Something you said . . . earlier.

  I saw no clue to this.

  Short life span. That is why . . . they struggle so.

  And would cancel themselves entirely to do us harm? When we shall simply live on in our archive copies?

  Something about this species . . .

  They believe in something beyond selfhood?

  And we, who have copies safely stored, do not.

  If we cannot soon get aid—

  Our copies will be activated.

  I suppose that is some consolation.

  The little creature did not have even that.

  Perhaps it had something more?

  What could that be? What could that be?

  Beside them lay the finespun latticework of calcium rods that had been a rib cage. They sprawled amid meat and mess.

  The shattered creature seemed to still embody a secret the dying alien struggled to grasp.

  Structures unraveled. Currents ran down.

  On the barren plain only a single plaintive voice now called.

  What could that be? What could that be?

  PART FOUR

  Sense of Self

  Nature does not err, for she makes no statements.

  —BERTRAND RUSSELL

  ONE

  Melted Portals

  He crawled down a muddy slope and hoped that he would not stand out against the thermal background. The air was thick and moist and that was of some help. Maybe.

  Killeen thought again about the fact that he had been running away from ruined cities most of his life.

  Retreating from the burned and smashed ruins of the Citadel—yeasay, that he remembered sharply. That day seemed to lie far down a corridor of ruin and destruction stretching back longer than any man could live. To him came the names of favorite places where he had played as a boy and learned as a man: The Broadsward, Green Market, the Three Ladies’ Rest. All that remained of them now were the jagged teeth of broken walls, whistling in cold winds.

  This time was no different. The mechs had ripped the portal city apart the way a seamstress would tear the arms off a dress—professionally, swift and sure.

  —Cermo!—he sent on low comm.

  No answer. Probably smart not to answer, anyway.

  The mechs who came spilling through the portal were like nothing Killeen had ever seen before and they could do a lot of deadly things. He had no idea how they had shut down all the Bishops’ circuitry. Then the control lifted and somebody lost and confused was babbling on all bands, panicked. A flash condensed out of the air quick as a gasp and that Bishop was dead.

  Killeen reached concealment under some widespread fronds. The trees here were like none he had ever seen on Snowglade. They angled their broad shelves in the direction of the bright timestone. When one area faded the trees turned their attention to the next radiant patch. They moved like great wise creatures with many hands, palms cupped up to the shining.

  He wormed his way under them and in time over a low saddle-back. Here he could get a look back at the vast complex where the Bishops had entered the esty.

  He edged up over a rock rim. Through long years on the run he had learned to never expose himself to detection. Not if he could wait it out and let the enemy move away. But he had to find Bishops. Nobody else would pull the Family back together. Jocelyn and Cermo were good under-officers but they would spend their time trying to find him.

  He bobbed his head up over the rim and quick-tapped his right incisor twice and ducked back down. That froze the image on his retina so he had time to study it.

  The portal complex was bigger than any construction he had ever seen, except the ruin of a Chandelier. It worked in intricate fashion, amazing the Bishops, but it had blown to splinters when the mechs erupted into it. Now the remaining hexagonal matrices were liquefying. Their huge slab walls bubbled and slid and fumed a brown vapor.

  He watched the still image but no Bishop telltales throbbed in it. Then he heard a noise.

  He rolled left and sent an interrogating pulse toward the sound.

  “Ah!” A thin cry.

  He brought a bolt antenna around on the cry and saw that it was Andro. “Damn! That hurt!”

  “You’re lucky you’re alive. I could’ve just fired.”

  “That was an inquiry? It might have killed my inboards.”

  “You’re too flimsy,” Killeen said, scanning the territory behind Argo. Coming up behind approaching humans was an old mech trick.

  “Less circuitry for mechs to sniff.”

  Killeen looked at the scrawny man. Andro was nearly naked and without visible augmentations. “No weapons either, looks like.”

  “I’m a legal man, not a bone crusher.”

  “Try using your laws here. Or collecting a tax.”

  “Your bang-bang didn’t cut thick air back there either.”

  They were immediately back on the same tack as before, Killeen noted abstractly. Because they couldn’t talk right away about what had happened. “Have you seen any of my people?”

  “Thought I did.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Running. You ground-pounders sure make big targets.”

  “I haven’t noticed your people doing so well.”

  Andro nodded soberly. “Dunno where I’ll find my woman. My son, he skated for Thermograd two days ago, so I suppose he is clear.”

  “Is that a portal place? Like your city?”

  Andro blinked. “Uh. I see.”

  Killeen bobbed his head over the rim again and sat grimly watching the result. The city had slid into slag. Andro was an irritating little man but there was no point in saying the obvious. Mechs would probably hit as many portals into the esty as they could. They were systematic. When they had decided to destroy Citadel Bishop they attacked the other Families, too. Thermograd would be no different.

  “Let’s move. I have to find my Family.”

  Andro made to stand up and look over the rim and Killeen put a hand on his shoulder. “No point.”

  “I want one last look.”

  “I’m shielded. You aren’t.”

  “Your tech is trivial compared with theirs.”

  “Sure. But only children take risks they don’t have to. If a mech sees you—”

  Andro slipped away and scrambled up the slope. He was quick about looking and Killeen let him go rather than drag him back. When the man came back down the expression on his face told Killeen that he would be all right now. Andro was from a different kind of people but he knew that you had to close a door on some things and just walk away.

  “Let’s go,” Andro said.

  “Moving draws attention.”

  “I doubt it makes a difference to this kind.”

  “You know much about them?”

  “We have some intelligence estimates. Data down the timeline from outside. We’re further up the esty gradient, so we are closer to their tech developments.”

  Killeen knew that somehow the Argo had entered this esty thing on a twisty course through the Far Black—by which the locals meant the region swirling around the fat-bellied middle of the Eater itself. And portal cities ran slower than time outside, in ordinary “flat” space-time. Places further inside the esty from the portals ran slower still—only “inside” wasn’t the right word, for some reason of geometry he could not grasp. “Neighboring” was closer to the truth.

  Killeen stopped checking his gear. “Can you sniff them?”

  “Sometimes. Most of the mechs went on farther into the esty, once they’d dumped the ooze on us.”

  “I saw it hit some people.” They had turned to sulphurous liquid while he watched and did no
thing. “Just a drop or so.”

  Killeen finished his inventory and wondered what to do with this man. He had ordered all Bishops into field gear the instant Andro told him that they were picking up mech emissions from the Far Black beyond the portal. Due to time dilation effects, that was as much warning as they got, though by physical calculation the mechs would have to spiral in along a tortured path in the Eater’s ergosphere. That tangled descent compressed to barely an hour of local esty time.

  Killeen was Cap’n of the Bishops but by age-old custom he hauled gear just like anyone. Backpacked on his lower spine were the topo and mapping system he had worn back on Snowglade. Family lore had it that the topo man was the first to fry. Hunter mechs—Lancers, Hawks, Rattlers, Stalkers, Vipers—bounced their low hooting voices off the topo register. Then they backtracked on him and slithered in electromagnetic finger knives.

  “These mechs, they’re different,” Killeen said, reflecting.

  Andro nodded. “A new species.”

  Killeen set his shank compressors. Like almost all Bishop gear they were shaped from the most pliant kind of mechmetal. Bishop artisans had lost their independence from mechtech generations ago. He had entertained the notion of adding to his gear in the portal city but was glad now that he had not bought any of the double-walled helmets or hip shocks.

  “You should have better stuff,” Andro said, studying him.

  “Load up and you’ll just throw it away in the field. Speed’s your best defense.”

  “We’re not making any speed sitting here.”

  “You got a lot of opinions for a desk commander.”

  “I’ve seen you Hunker Down types come and go.”

  “Bishops are different.”

  Andro sobered immediately, his face bleak and drawn. “That’s what we learned at the Replicator. Those Legacies of yours—who would’ve guessed?”

  “I can’t say I followed it all,” Killeen said guardedly. In fact he wanted to see if Andro would give anything away. The little man now barely came up to Killeen’s belt. Maybe bulk alone would impress him.

  Andro smiled wearily. “C’mon, I’m not hiding anything.”

  “We’ve got to find Toby and Abraham, I got that.”

  “The ‘Way of Three,’ wasn’t that the phrase? Imagine, putting a message in so deep it can’t express itself overtly in just one copy of the code. I’d have thought the genotypic—”