Starplex

by Robert J. Sawyer

  More dog barks. "You give special treatment to life sciences because your spouse heads that division."

  Keith forced a small laugh, although his heart was pounding with repressed anger. "Rissa sometimes says the opposite--that I don't give her enough resources, that I'm bending over backward to appease you."

  "She manipulates you, Lansing. She--what is the human metaphor? She has you wrapped around her little finger."

  Keith thought about showing Jag a different finger.

  They're all like this, he thought. An entire planet of quarrelsome, bickering, argumentative pigs. He tried not to sound weary. "What exactly is it that you want, Jag?"

  The Waldahud raised his upper left hand, and ticked off stubby, hairy fingers with his upper right. "Two more probeships assigned exclusively to physical-sciences missions.

  An additional Central Computer bank dedicated to astrophysics. Twenty more staff members."

  "The staff additions are impossible," said Keith. "We don't have apartments to house them. I'll see what I can do about your other requests, though." He paused for a second, and then: "But in the future, Jag, I think you'll find that I'm easier to convince when you don't bring my private life into the discussion."

  Jag barked harshly. "I knew it!" said the translated voice.

  "You make your decisions based on personal feelings, not on the merit of the argument. You are truly unfit to hold the post of director."

  Keith felt his anger about to boil over. He tried to calm himself, and closed his eyes, hoping to summon a tranquil image. He expected to see his wife's face, but the picture that came to him was of an Asian beauty two decades younger than Rissa--and that just made Keith madder at himself. He opened his eyes. "Look," he said, a quaver in his voice,

  "I don't give a damn whether you approve of the choice of me as Starplex director or not. The fact is that I am director, and will be for another three years. Even if you could somehow get me replaced before my term is over, the agreed-to rotation calls for a human to hold this post at this time. If you get rid of me--or if I quit because I'm fed the hell up with you--you're still going to be reporting to a human. And some of us don't like you"--he stopped himself before he said "you pigs"--"at all."

  "Your posturing does you no credit, Lansing. The resources I am demanding are for the good of our mission."

  Keith sighed again. He was getting too old for this. "I'm not going to argue anymore, Jag. You've made your request; I'll give it all the consideration it is due."

  The Waldahud's four square nostrils flared. "I am amazed," said Jag,

  "that Queen Truth ever thought we could work with humans." He rotated on his black hooves, and headed down the corridor without another word.

  Keith stood there for two minutes, doing calming breathing exercises, then headed along the chilly corridor toward the elevator station.

  Keith Lansing and his wife, Rissa Cervantes, shared a standard human apartment aboard Starplex: L-shaped living room, a bedroom, a small office with two desks, one bathroom with human fixtures, and a second with multispecies fixtures. There was no kitchen, but Keith, who liked to cook, had rigged up a small oven so that he could indulge his hobby.

  The main door to the apartment slid open, and Keith stormed in. Rissa must have arrived a few minutes earlier; she came out of the bedroom naked, obviously preparing for her midday shower.

  "Hi, Chesterton," she said, smiling. But the smile faded away, and Keith imagined that she could see the tension in his face, his forehead creased, his mouth downturned.

  "What's wrong?"

  Keith flopped himself onto the couch. From this angle, he was facing the dartboard Rissa had mounted on one wall.

  The three darts were clustered in the tiny sixty-point part of the triple-scoring band--Rissa was shipboard champion.

  "Another run-in with Jag," said Keith.

  Rissa nodded. "It's his way," she said. "It's their way2' "I know. I know. But, Christ, it's hard to take sometimes."

  They had a large rear window on one wall, showing the starfield outside the ship, dominated by the bright F-class star nearby. Two other walls were capable of displaying holograms. Keith was from Calgary, Alberta; Rissa had been born in Spain. One wall showed glacier-fed Lake Louise, with the glorious Canadian Rockies rising up behind it; the other a long view of downtown Madrid, with its appealing mixture of sixteenthand twenty--century architecture.

  "I thought you'd show up here around now," said Rissa.

  "I was waiting to shower with you." Keith was pleasantly surprised.

  They'd showered together a lot when they'd first gotten married, almost twenty .years ago, but had gotten out of the habit as the years wore on.

  The necessity of showering twice a day to minimize the human body odor Waldahudin found so offensive had turned the cleansing ritual into an irritating bore, but maybe their impending anniversary had Rissa feeling more romantic than usual.

  Keith smiled at her and began to undress. Rissa headed into the main bathroom and began running the water. Starplex was such a contrast to the ships of Keith's youth, like the Lester B. Pearson he'd traveled on back when first contact with the Waldahudin had been made. In those days, he'd had to be content with sonic showers. There was something to be said for carrying a miniature ocean around as part of your ship.

  He followed her into the bathroom. She was already in the shower, soaking down her long, black hair. Once she'd moved out from under the shower head, Keith jockeyed into position, enjoying the sensation of her wet body sliding past his. He'd lost half his hair over the years, and what was left he kept short. Still, he massaged his scalp vigorously, trying to work out his anger with Jag in doing so.

  He scrubbed Rissa's back for her, and she scrubbed his in turn. They rinsed, then he turned off the water. If he hadn't been so angry, perhaps they'd have made love, but . . .

  Dammit. He began to towel off.

  "I hate this," Keith said.

  Rissa nodded. "I know."

  "It's not that I hate Jag--not really. I hate . . . hate myself.

  Hate feeling like a bigot." He ran the towel up and down his back. "I mean, I know the Waldahudin have different ways. I know that, and I try to accept it. But--Christ, I hate myself for even thinking this--they're all the same. Obnoxious, argumentative, pushy. I've never met One who wasn't." He sprayed deodorant under each arm. "The whole idea of thinking I know all about somebody just because I know what race they belong to is abhorrent--it's everything I was brought up to understand. And now I find myself doing it day in and day out." He sighed.

  "Waldahud.

  Pig. The terms are interchangeable in my mind."

  Rissa had finished drying herself. She pulled on a beige long-sleeve shirt and fresh panties. "They think the same way about us, you know.

  All humans are weak, indecisive.

  They don't have any korbaydin."

  Keith managed a small laugh at the use of the Waldahudar word. "I do too," he said pointing down. "Of course, I only have two instead of four, but they do the job." He got a fresh pair of boxer shorts and a pair of brown denim pants out of the closet, and put them on. The pants constricted to fit around his waist. "Still," he said, "the fact that they also generalize doesn't make it any better." He sighed. "It wasn't like this with the dolphins."

  "Dolphins are different," said Rissa, pulling on a pair of red pants.

  "In fact, maybe that's the key. They're so different from us that we can bask in those differences. The biggest problem with the Waldahudin is that we have too much in common with them."

  She moved over to her dresser. She didn't put on any makeup; the natural look was the current style for both men and women. But she did insert two diamond earrings, each the size of a small grape. Cheap diamond imports from Rehbollo had destroyed any remaining value natural gemstones had, but their innate beauty was unsurpassed.

  Keith had finished dressing, too. He'd put on a synthetic shirt with a dark brown herringbone pattern, and a bei
ge cardigan sweater.

  Thankfully, as humanity moved out into the universe, one of the first bits of needless mass to be ejected had been the jacket and tie for men; even formal wear did not demand them anymore. With the advent of the four-day, and then the three-day, workweek on Earth, the distinction between office clothes and leisure clothes had disappeared.

  He looked over at Rissa. She was beautiful--at forty-four, she was still beautiful. Maybe they should make love.

  So what if they just got dressed? Besides, these crazy thoughts aboutBleep. "Karendaughter to Lansing."

  Speak of the devil. Keith lifted his head, spoke into the air.

  "Open.

  Lianne Karendaugliter's rich voice came out of the wall speaker.

  "Keith--fantastic news! A watson just came through from CHAT with word that a new shortcut has come on-line!"

  Keith raised his eyebrows. "Did the boomerang reach Rehbollo 376A ahead of schedule?" That sometimes happened; judging interstellar distances was a tricky game.

  "No. This is a different shortcut, and it came on-line because something--or, if we're lucky, someone-- moved through it locally."

  "Has anything unexpected come through any of the homeworld shortcuts?"

  "Not yet," said Lianne, her voice still bubbling with excitement. "We only discovered this one was now on-line because a cargo module accidentally got misdirected to it."

  Keith was on his feet at once. "Recall all probeships," he said.

  "Summon Jag to the bridge, and alert all stations for a possible first-contact situation." He hurried out the apartment door, Rissa right behind him.

  BETA DRACONIS

  Keith Lansing looked around the docking bay aboard the strange alien craft. Like the ship's exterior, this part, too, was featureless. No seams, no equipment, nothing marring the six glowing cube faces.

  When the shortcuts were discovered, the press had delighted in bandying around a centurY-old saying, attributed to the Sri Lankan writer Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

  The shortcuts were magic.

  And so was this strange, beautiful starship, this starship that moved in apparent defiance of Newton's laws . . .

  Keith took a deep breath. He knew what was about to happen, knew it in his bones. He was about to meet the makers of the shortcuts.

  The pod's course across the bay curved gently downward and soon it came to rest on the flat lower face of the bay.

  Keith felt weight returning. It continued to grow slowly, and he settled to the floor. The gravity kept increasing, more and more, until it had reached Starplex's shipboard standard.

  But still it grew, and Keith fought a wave of panic, fearing he would be crushed to jelly.

  Finally, though, it stopped--and Keith realized that it was at just about the level he kept it at in his cabin aboard ship, nine percent higher than the Commonwealth standard but equal to Earth's sea-level surface gravity.

  And then, suddenly-- Everything around him was . . . was familiar.

  Was Earth.

  The edge of a mixed forest, maple trees and spruces rising to a sky the shade of blue no other planet he'd ever seen had. Sunlight precisely the color of Sol's--matching the antihomesickness lamps he and Rissa had in their apartment aboard Starplex. To his right, a lake covered with lily pads, bulrushes rising from its edge. Overhead, a V-shaped flock of--no mistake--of Canada geese, and--yup, just to dispel any final doubt, a daytime gibbous moon, showing the Sea of Tranquility and the O-shaped Sea of Crises to its right.

  An illusion, of course. Virtual reality. Make him feel at home.

  Perhaps they could read his mind, or perhaps they'd already contacted other travelers from Earth.

  The travel pod had no elaborate sensors. There was air in the bay, though. He could hear--God, he could hear crickets, and bullfrogs, and, yes, the haunting call of a loon, all transmitted through the hull of the ship from the air outside. No way to test a sample, but they couldn't have gotten all the other details right and screwed up on something as simple as the gas mixture for human-breathable air.

  And yet, he hesitated. The trip to Tau Ceti was supposed to be a simple run; Keith hadn't even bothered to see if there was a spacesuit in the pod's emergency locker before departure.

  But it was clearly an invitation--an invitation to first contact. And first contact was what Starplex was all about.

  Keith touched a series of controls, overriding the safety interlocks that kept the pod's rear door from opening when it wasn't connected to an access ring. The glassteel panel slid up into the roof.

  Keith took a tentative breath-- And sneezed.

  Jesus Christ, he thought. Ragweed pollen. These guys were good.

  He sniffed again, and could smell all the things he'd have smelled if he really were back on Earth. Wildflowers and grass and damp wood and a thousand other things, subtly mixed. He stepped out.

  They'd thought of everything--a perfect re-creation.

  Why, he even left footprints in the soft earth, something most virtual-reality simulations tripped up on. Indeed, he could feel the texture of the ground through the soles of his shoes, feel it give with each step, feel the springiness of grass compressing beneath his feet, the sharp jab of a stone. It was perfect . . .

  And then it hit him. Maybe he was back on Earth. The shortcut makers knew how to cut across space in the twinkling of an eye. Maybe this was the real thing, maybe he was home-- But there had been no second shortcut inside the docking bay, no flash of purple Soderstrom radiation. And besides, if this was Earth, where had they found such unspoiled wilderness? He looked again at the sky, searching for an airplane or shuttle contrail.

  Still--his sneezing meant they'd actually manufactured allergen molecules, or were manipulating his mind on a very sophisticated level.

  Suddenly Keith felt his throat constricting. A zoo/ A goddamned zoo, and he was a specimen in it. He was trapped, a prisoner. He turned around, about to rush back to his pod, and saw the glass man.

  "Hello, Keith," said the man. His whole body was transparent, made of perfect crystal that flowed as he moved. There was only the faintest hint of color to the transparent form, a touch of cool aquamarine.

  Keith said nothing for several seconds. The pounding of his heart was drowning out the wilderness sounds. "You know who I am?" he said at last.

  "Sort of," said the glass man. His voice was masculine, deep. His body, although humanoid, was stylized, like a mannequin in a trendy store. His head was a featureless'egg shape, with the point forming the chin. Although the arms and legs seemed well proportioned, they were smooth, without any apparent musculature. The belly and chest were flat, and the transparent sex organ between the legs was simplified, rocket-shaped.

  Keith stared at the glass man, wondering what to do next.

  Finally, desperate to know his status, he said: "I want to leave."

  "You may," said the glass man, spreading his transparent arms.

  "Anytime you wish. Your pod stands waiting for you." There was no sign of a speaking orifice on the simple ovoid head, but Keith's ears told him the sound was indeed emanating from it.

  "This--this isn't a zoo?" asked Keith.

  There was a sound like wind chimes--glassy laughter?

  "No."

  "And I'm not a prisoner?"

  The wind chimes again. "No. You are--is 'guest' the right word? You are my guest."

  "How can you speak English ?"

  "I don't, actually, of course. My reckoner is translating the words for you."

  "Did you make the shortcuts?"

  "The what?"

  "The shortcuts. The interstellar gateways, the stargates--whatever you want to call them."

  "'Shortcuts,'" said the glass man, nodding. "A good name for them.

  Yes, we created them."

  Keith 's pulse was racing. "What do you want from me ?"

  The wind chimes once more. "You seem defensive, Keith.

 
Isn't there some standard speech you're supposed to make in a first-contact situation? Or is it too early for that?".

  Too early? "Well, yes." Keith swallowed. "I, G. K.

  Lansing, Director of Starplex, bring you friendly greetings from the Commonwealth of Planets, a peaceful association of four sentient races from three different homeworlds."

  "Ah, now that's better. Thank you."

  Keith was struggling to take it all in: the transparent humanoid, the forest re-creation, the beautiful starship, the diverting of his pod.

  "I'd still like to know what you want from me," he said at last.

  The glass man tipped his featureless head at Keith. "Well, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, the fate of the universe is in question."

  Keith blinked.

  "But, more than that," said the glass man, "I need to ask you some questions. For you see, Keith Lansing, you hold not only the key to the future, but also to the past."

  Chapter II

  A new sector of space--and one that had opened unexpectedly.

  Keith and Rissa hurried to the bridge, entering through the port-side door . . which meant that Keith had to pass right by Lianne Karendaughter. Brilliant (a master's in electrical engineering from MIT), beautiful (luscious Asian features, mounds of platinum hair pinned up by gold clips), and young, Lianne had joined Starplex just six weeks ago, after a distinguished term as chief engineer on a large commercial hyperliner. She smiled at Keith as he passed--a radiant smile, a supernova smile. Keith felt his stomach flutter.

  Starplex's bridge appeared to have no walls, floor, or ceiling.

  Instead, it was enveloped by a spherical hologram of the ship's surroundings, its workstations seemingly floating amongst the stars.

  The actual room was rectangular, with a doorway built into each wall, but the doors were invisible, lost within the spacescape. When they split down the middle and slid aside, it was as though space were opening up, revealing the corridors beyond. Apparently suspended in midair--but really attached to the invisible walls just above the doors--were trios of glowing clocks in each homeworld's time keeping system.