Sailing Bright Eternity

by Gregory Benford

  We do, at least in the most general sense. I would remind you that thermodynamics rules us all.

  * * *

  “I sure don’t know what in hell thermo-what is but I can smell bullshit without standing in it.”

  * * *

  Your great fore-beings knew our similarities, though I must admit they lacked your flair for the direct. I must hasten here—attend: You primates carry data we need in pursuit of an ancient obsession. There are accounts of lore invented by the early organic forms, those who first devised the mechanical forms. These kindle great pleasure in our kind. Exquisite joys, legendary. And, some accounts have it, dangerous beyond measure. I seek those.

  * * *

  “Want to get high? That’s what this is ’bout?”

  * * *

  It is no trivial aim. The Exalteds of my order attach great merit to this pursuit. They are privy to reports, quite old and somewhat unreliable, which relate that many of our kind extinguished themselves upon contact with this information.

  * * *

  “Committed suicide?” Killeen saw and felt himself working along the face of the rough clay and yet also hung suspended in an icy black vault, where the talk from the Mantis sped by in an eyeblink.

  * * *

  Died. Without emitting a single deathcry. Some speculate that they experienced pleasures they could not withstand.

  * * *

  “Umm. I’ve felt like that. Passes, though.”

  * * *

  I see! This is irony, yes?

  * * *

  “No, sarcasm.”

  * * *

  These indeterminate positional languages! They fructify with meaning. Entrancing. I would sup of this more.

  * * *

  “Don’t take hints much, do you?”

  * * *

  I suppose not. My serial language skills are still—

  * * *

  “Talking down to us is so hard?”

  * * *

  Narrow and yet fraught with shadings. But this artistic discussion will have to come later. For this moment we must exchange information.

  * * *

  “I don’t have to tell you a damn thing.”

  * * *

  I will reward you with information which you need. I believe this is congruent with your imperative architectures.

  * * *

  Killeen paused on the steep face and puffed loudly and the cool suspended part of him went on. “I don’t know where Toby and Abraham are.”

  * * *

  You can, however, contribute to their discovery. If they can help us ferret out this arcane pleasure, then we shall reunite you all.

  * * *

  “Reunite in life? Or in some artwork of yours?”

  * * *

  In realtime lifeline, I assure you.

  * * *

  “And I’m supposed to believe you?”

  * * *

  I speak as truthfully as one can in serial representations such as your acoustic mode. Also, I do not believe you have any alternative.

  * * *

  “How come?”

  * * *

  You mortal beings value your incorporate selves as essential. I fully understand why, and consider that this is a high value, an aesthetic and intellectual position our kind has—perhaps regrettably—lost.

  * * *

  “So you’ll kill us unless I cooperate?”

  * * *

  Of course not. But I can make use of you in ways you will find threaten your selfhood.

  * * *

  Killeen could imagine what uses the Mantis had in mind. He had seen Fanny contorted into a grotesque parody of herself. This was a strangely polite conversation and he suspected something else was going on in it. “What do you want from me?”

  * * *

  I have already obtained most of my needs as this interaction has proceeded. Your reactions I have extracted as I provoked them.

  * * *

  Killeen blinked. “For . . . what?”

  * * *

  For simulacra. We have made use of the facility you call the Restorer. Much of these methods we knew already but there are nuances which your species has produced. Bio logics. These we have learned. You will find we are a quick study.

  * * *

  He clung to a ledge on the gully wall and breathed steadily as his hands groped for the next hold. Within the cool secluded part of him a leaden darkness grew. “For copies?”

  * * *

  Of yourself. They will help us all.

  * * *

  “To find Toby and Abraham?”

  * * *

  Toby is the most important. He carries information we need relevant to the Pleasure Plague.

  * * *

  “That’s what you call it?”

  * * *

  Our sparse data suggests that this Disorder of Desire can communicate, much as a disease does among you. This is another curious feature which we must investigate.

  * * *

  “Sounds to me like you’d better leave it alone.”

  * * *

  I believe even you can see that we cannot allow a basic feature of our makeup such as this to elude us. We know all of ourselves—that is the nature of higher intelligences. You do not know yourselves. Much of your antic artistry and chaotic creativity stems from that, I feel. But you must admit that you are an early, malformed stage of development. Systems with no “subconscious” or ungoverned elements are far more functional. Thus they must learn all facets of themselves, to improve.

  * * *

  Killeen snorted with contempt. More empty talk.

  * * *

  I do not deny that I/we have used you to our own ends.

  * * *

  “Even when we thought different, right?”

  * * *

  You refer to how you escaped from Snowglade in the Argo?

  * * *

  “We blew you all to smash and scatteration in our exhaust wash.”

  * * *

  That manifestation of me, yes. I thought it would give you some pleasure of your own. And strengthen your own stature within your tribe.

  * * *

  “I figured it was biggo bogus anyway.” Killeen remembered the celebrating Bishops after they had played raw hard plasma over the Mantis below. Satisfying, but he had always wondered.

  * * *

  That role devolved upon me. I had studied you as artworks for many generations. When the Exalteds decided to assemble the existing fragments of the Plague puzzle, they delegated to me the stimulation of your flight. The Argo would have destroyed itself if we had attempted to read its Legacies ourselves. Still more difficult would have been moving Argo here to the esty, and bringing the knowledge of the Myriapodia as well.

  * * *

  Andro was getting frazzled with the climbing and Killeen did not like the deranged, white-eyed look on the sweating face. Andro was used to cities and the mechs had brought all that down in minutes. It would take him a while to get his mind around that. That was the difference between a life spent on the move and one with feet sunk in the sod, bound up with buildings and possessions and the fat habits of mind. Killeen reached the last rough rim of the gully and rolled onto the plain above, gasping.

  “They’re all part of it? Seems complicated.”

  * * *

  History is. The Myriapodia were—as the Exalteds predicted—essential in your reaching this place. They do not carry the Way of Three but they are a useful mixed-organic form. Some of us believe the Myriapodia may recapitulate a transitory mode of life which gave birth to our Phylum, a bridge between us and you. In any case they have now done their essential task for us and shall be eliminated, as they do consume resources.

  * * *

  “Pretty tough on the competition.” Killeen was trying to figure a way out of this and keeping the Mantis talking was all he could think of.

  * * *

  There is no need of deception between us. You know that you shall go the way of all f
leshlife. Though as I have offered before, you can/should/will be enshrined in my/our artistry. This is the highest fate you dreaming vertebrates can cherish.

  * * *

  “I think we can do better than that. At least we’ll be doing it. You wouldn’t understand that, though.”

  Andro trembled with fatigue and could not haul himself up the last steep slope. Killeen rolled to his left and grasped his hand. Andro got over at the rim and gulped in air, face red, eyes white.

  * * *

  As a collector and artist I much desire to sample and record both Abraham and Toby. That is the Way of Three the Exalteds have discerned in the scattered, archaic data. The Pleasure Plague somehow intersects certain genetic lines of your lowly Phylum. I already have your own genetic record, of course, as part of my research for the Fanny sculpture. I then attempted—

  * * *

  “You got me?” Killeen felt a hot anger. His Arthur Aspect spun a picture of two helices wrapped around each other and began a droning lecture about genes but he brushed it aside.

  * * *

  Of course. I scoured the Argo for flakes of skin, human dander, but could confirm no such from Toby. And your father we failed to find at your Citadel.

  * * *

  Killeen looked quickly around. Nothing on the arid plain. The esty curvature loomed above, distant and filmy. No escape anywhere. “I couldn’t find him either. Figured he was in one of the collapsed buildings.”

  * * *

  We excavated fruitlessly. We have no reliable method of searching out his DNA and knowing it was Abraham’s. But the Magnetic Mind carried signals from him, coming from somewhere in this place.

  * * *

  “How’d he get away from you, if you’re so all-fired powerful?”

  * * *

  There are other forces afoot here—to use an image your Phylum would employ.

  * * *

  “Glad to hear it.” Did this thing understand sarcasm?

  * * *

  Something concentrated an energy density at the Citadel of the Bishops exceeding our capabilities. It transported Abraham away, apparently intact.

  * * *

  “Nice trick.”

  Killeen helped Andro to his feet. The man looked wildly into the distance and mumbled. Killeen followed Andro’s line of sight and caught a glimmering of structure. Lacy lines, straight but shifting with uneasy energy.

  Andro seemed all right now. His systems seemed jumpy but better than Killeen’s. He pointed.

  Something there now. Swift. Jerky. Mobile lattice more than a structure and parts went away for a while and came back and he could not see how that happened.

  Andro had some sort of weapon hidden in his elbow. Killeen had not even recognized it. He sent something at the form on the horizon. Killeen saw it as a flash in his sensorium.

  Andro sat down suddenly. Without a sound he kicked his heels savagely against the ground. It was as though he were dancing and had just made the mistake of lying down first. His face showed no concern. Hands cupped together as if he were praying. His legs drummed on frantically. Sweat jumped out all over him in seconds and he breathed heavily and still not a flicker in the impassive face. He began to blink fast and then faster.

  He stopped. Legs and arms went limp. A long sigh escaped his chest and his eyes closed.

  Killeen listened to the Mantis go away as his sensorium drained of color and calmed. He did not move until the presence was gone and then Andro began to speak. He went on for a long time and none of it made any sense of course.

  FOUR

  The Way of Three

  So this whole esty thing’s been designed for us?” Killeen asked.

  “Humans?” Andro was still groggy from the Mantis’s little lesson.

  “Planet-bound life, I mean.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Planets are sure simple compared to this.” Killeen waved at the crusted desert they were crossing. “Water and wind and light—all’ve got to move just right. Otherwise you suffocate or starve.”

  Andro nodded sluggishly. “It gave us . . . comfortable place to live.”

  “Like the Citadel. People well off don’t think about how precarious it all is.”

  “So?”

  Killeen realized that Andro was the product of many generations tucked into the esty and had no direct knowledge of what things were like on the outside. It was as though he saw distant events as passing items of interest, no more. Maybe that was what happened to people everywhere. Nothing to gain from pointing it out to him, though. “How come there’s hardly anybody around?”

  “You have to know where to look. In my office, I have esty cords of human areas. Alien ones, too. They keep shifting all the time so we have to keep updating them. Or . . . had to.” Andro blinked. “I guess that’s all gone now.”

  Andro limped as they trudged over the smooth curvature of the crusty plain. They had walked and slept and walked again and the land was the same chalky soil, low scrub and washed-out basins. The esty curved up and over and through pale clouds Killeen could see that the land above was the same.

  “How come people haven’t filled up the esty?” Killeen asked.

  Andro stopped. “Huh. I never thought of that.”

  “It’s made for planetary life, there’s been enough time—right?”

  “People come through the portals, go farther in. Have been for a long time. Most we never see again.”

  They looked at each other. Andro said, “We cannot really map the esty, but—”

  “It sure looks empty. That measures how big it is.”

  Andro said forlornly, “Maybe it’ll swallow up the mechs, too.”

  Killeen shook his head. “They planned this a long time. Look at that sinkhole full of scrapped mechs back there. The Mantis set us up for that and it made the point. They’ve got plenty.”

  Andro’s face textured with worry. “We found that pyramid, our own dead. Then their dead. I thought that was the point.”

  “The Mantis never says just one thing. Maybe it can’t read our deep memories, or can’t figure them out.”

  “We shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Prob’ly.” Mechs could seed an area with microscopic bugs, eavesdropping on anyone. What the Bishops had learned at the portal city’s Restorer, combined with the Argo’s Legacies, was dizzying, complex. “Sure strange, though.”

  The Legacies could be read only in combination with information in the Restorer—ancient text-codes gotten from the Galactic Library. The story was snaky, convoluted, understandable only by combining a variety of sources. Stitching it together, Killeen had finally understood some of his own history.

  The earliest intelligent life in the galaxy, who had produced the early mechs, knew the dangers inherent in the timeless conflict between the two forms. Mechs could redesign themselves, improve and sculpt their bodies and minds alike. The organic forms were slower, reluctant to wrench themselves away from the modes that evolution had wrought. They altered their culture, but not their substrate—brains and bodies.

  Inevitably, they fell behind the rapid pace of their own creations. And they knew they were flagging. They wanted a trump card. The First Command.

  Deep in the inner design codes of those early machines, the ancients embedded a First Command that could not even in principle be detected by the mechs themselves. The hiding of the First Command, so that each mech carried it as a deep operating system, yet could not access it, was the greatest creation of some unknown ancient scientist.

  The effect was subtle. Activated, the First Command codes brought great pleasure. Then, death by ecstasy.

  Mechs who turned against their Natural forebears could then be destroyed, by the trigger codes that activated the First Command.

  That checked with what the Mantis chose to reveal. Killeen had warily listened to it, while carefully trying not to think about the unspoken.

  What it had not said was that if another trigger code was activated from outs
ide—the Second Command—the mech felt the impulse to convey its sublime joy to others. Then pleasure became a plague. Death came far faster.

  But this method had failed in the far past. Information about how to activate the First Command was lost—by accident, perhaps. Or by a change of heart, or faltering will, among the early Naturals.

  Except . . . some ancients had deliberately scattered the First Command. They stored it where organic intelligence could always carry information: their own genetic codes.

  The Legacies had a bit of it. The rest resided in the coiled long molecules within every single cell of organic races. It must have seemed a perfect way to keep the crucial information available to all who might need it.