Starplex

by Robert J. Sawyer

  "If that is what you'd like, then of course you have my permission."

  "Thank you, Dr. Lansing. Thank you very much."

  Keith nodded, and headed for the door. He made his way down the warm corridor, back into the CAGE conditions of the central shaft.

  Normally, when he exited an Ibese area into the lower gravity of the rest of the ship, he felt buoyant, light as a feather.

  But not this time.

  "Tachyon pulse!" announced Rhombus from the ExOps station. "Something coming through the shortcut. Small object, only about a meter in diameter."

  Most likely a watson, Keith thought. "Let's have a look at it, Rhombus." Part of the spherical hologram was set off by a blue border, and inside the border was a telescopic view of the object that had popped out of the shortcut.

  "Welcome home!" said Thor Magnor, grinning broadly.

  "Somebody better get Hek and Shanu Azmi down here," said Keith.

  "Will do," said Lianne, then a moment later, "They're on their way."

  The port starfield split and the Waldahud alien-communications specialist waddled onto the bridge. Almost simultaneously, the door behind the seating gallery opened up, and Shahinshah Azmi came in. He was wearing tennis shorts and holding a racket. Keith gestured at the magnified image. "Look what's come back," he said.

  All four of Hek's eyes went wide. "That's . . . that's wonderful!"

  "Rhombus," Keith said, "scan it for anything untoward. If it's clean, use a tractor beam to haul it into docking bay six."

  "Scanning . . . no obvious problems. Locking on tractor beam."

  "Keep it isolated inside a forcefield once you get it aboard."

  "Will do, with respect."

  "I wish it had arrived last week," said Azmi.

  "Why?" Rissa asked.

  "It would have saved us all the work of building it."

  Rissa laughed.

  "Shanu, Hek, shall we repair to bay six?" Keith said.

  "I'd like to have a look, too," said Rissa.

  Keith smiled. "By all means."

  The four made their way to the docking bay. There, they stood behind a forcefield curtain, Hek about two meters to Keith's right, Azmi just behind him, and Rissa so close to her husband's left side that their elbows lightly touched. The cube was maneuvered into the bay by a series of invisible beams. Once it was set down, a force bubble was erected around it, and the space door slid down from the ceiling.

  They waited until the bay was pressurized, then went out to look at the cube.

  It had weathered the eons well. Its surface looked like it had been scoured with steel wool, but all the incised markings showing the sample questions on top were quite legible. It turned out that Rhombus had maneuvered the cube in so that the face with the answer was the one the cube was sitting on.

  "PHANTOM," Keith said, "flip the cube a quarter turn so that the bottom face is visible."

  Tractor beams manipulated the time capsule. In the space that had been left for the answer, black symbols stood out against a white background that had somehow been fused to the cube's surface.

  "Gods," said Hek.

  Rissa's jaw dropped.

  Keith stood immobile.

  At the top of the' answer space was a string of Arabic numerals: 10-646-397-281

  And beneath it, in English, was: "Pushing back the stars is necessary, and not a threat. It will benefit us all. Don't be afraid."

  Underneath all that, in somewhat smaller type, it said, "Keith Lansing."

  "I don't believe this," Keith said.

  "Hey, look at this," barked Hek, leaning closer. "That isn't how one makes that character, is it?"

  Keith peered at it. The serif on each lowercase u was on the left side of the letter instead of the right. "And the apostrophe in 'don't' is backward, too," said Keith.

  "And what's that series of numbers at the top? asked Pdssa.

  "It looks like a citizenship number," Keith said.

  "No--a mathematical expression," said Hek. "It is--it is--Central Computer?"

  "Negative one thousand three hundred and fourteen," said PHANTOM's voice.

  "No, it's not that," said Rissa, shaking her head slowly.

  "When humans write a letter, that's where they put the date."

  "So what's the format?" asked Hek. "Hour, then day, then month, then year? That doesn't work. How about the other way around? The tenth year, the six hundred and forty-sixth day. That makes no sense either, since they're only four hundred or so days in a Terran year."

  "No," said Rissa. "No, it's not that. It's the year--the whole thing is the year. Ten billion, six hundred and forty-six million, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand,

  two hundred and eighty-one."

  "The year?" said Hek.

  "The year," said Rissa. "The Earth year. Anno Domini--after the birth of Christ, a prophet."

  "But I've seen lots of human numbering before," said Hek.

  "Yes, you separate big numbers into thousands groups--my people do it into ten thousands. But I thought you used--what do you call them?--those subscripted curlicuesT'

  "Commas," said Rissa. 'Ze do use commas, or spaces."

  She seemed to be having trouble keeping her balance; she moved over to the docking-bay wall and leaned against it.

  "But . . . but imagine a time so far in the future that English isn't used anymore . . . a time in which it's been millions or billions of years since--" she pointed at Keith-- "since anyone has used English.

  They might indeed misremember the convention for writing big numbers, or how to make an apostrophe, or where the little extra doodad on a u went."

  "It's got to be a fake," Keith said, shaking his head.

  "If it is, it's a perfect one," said Azmi, waving a hand scanner. "We built some very long half-life radioactives into the cube's construction. The cube is now ten billion Earth years old plus or minus nine hundred million. The only way to fake that kind of dating would be to manufacture a counterfeit cube using the correct ratio of isotopes to give that apparent age. But even to the smallest detail this one matches our original--except for the radioactive decay and the surface scouring."

  "But to have it signed with my name," said Keith. "Surely that's a mistake?"

  "Perhaps somehow your name has come to be associated with Starplex,"

  said Hek. "You are its first director, after all, and, frankly, we Waldahudin always thought you took too much of the credit. Maybe that was not a signature. Maybe it was the address, or the salutation, or--"

  "No," said Rissa, eyes growing wide. Her voice was shaking with excitement. "No--it's from you."

  "But . . . but that's crazy," Keith said. "There's no way I'm going to be alive ten billion years from now."

  "Unless it's a relativistic effect," said Hek, "or perhaps suspended animation."

  "Or . . ." said Rissa, her voice still shaking.

  Keith looked at her. "Yes?"

  She started jogging out of the bay.

  "Where are you going?" barked Hek.

  "To find Boxcar," she shouted. "I want to tell her that our life-prolongation experiments are going to succeed beyond our wildest dreams."

  **ZETA DRACONIS**

  Glass rose from the clover-covered ground. "Perhaps you need some time to rest," he said. "I'll be back in a little while."

  "Wait," said Keith. "I want to know who you are. Who you really are."

  Glass said nothing, his head inclined to one side.

  Keith got to his feet as well. "I've got a right to know. I've answered every one of your questions. Now, please, answer this one of mine."

  "Very well, Keith." Glass spread his arms. "I'm you--Gilbert Keith Lansing--but you of the future. You don't know how long I'd been racking my brain trying to remember what the bloody G stood for."

  Keith's jaw had dropped. "That--that can't be right. You can't be me."

  "Oh, yes I am," said Glass. "Of course, I'm a little bit older." He touched the side of his smooth, transparent
head, then made the wind-chime laughter sound. "See? I've lost all my hair."

  Keith narrowed his eyes. "How far in the future are you from?"

  "Well," said Glass, gently, "actually, you've got it backward. We are in my present. The appropriate question is, how far from the past are you from?"

  Keith felt himself losing his balance. "You mean--you mean this isn't 2094?"

  "Twenty-ninety-four what?"

  "The Earth year 2094--2094 n.o. Two thousand and ninety-four years after the birth of Christ."

  "Who ? Oh, wait--my reckoner just reminded me. Let me work it out; I know the current year in absolute counting from the creation of the universe, but . . . ah, okay. In your system, this is the year ten billion, six hundred and forty-six million, three hundred and ninety-seven thousand, two hundred and eighty-one."

  Keith staggered back a half pace. "You sent back our time capsule."

  "That's right."

  "How--how did I get here?"

  "When your pod passed through the shortcut, I locked you into stasis.

  Time passed in the universe, but not for you.

  When it got to be this year, I unlocked you. Don't worry, though. I intend to put you back where you came from." A pause. "Remember that pink nebula you saw as you came out of the gate? That's what's left of what used to be Sol."

  Keith 's eyes went wide.

  "Don't be concerned," said Glass. "No one was injured when Sol went nova. It was all carefully engineered. See, that type of star doesn't naturally go nova; it just decays to a white dwarf. But we like to recycle. We blew it up so that its metals would enrich the interstellar medium."

  Keith felt dizzy. "And how--how are you going to return me to my time?"

  "Through the shortcut, of course. Time travel to the past works well; we just can't do it to thefuture--that's why we had to let you come forward in stasis through ten billion years. Ironically, it turns out that it's forward time travel, not backward travel, that results in unsolvable paradoxes, making it impossible. We'll send you back to the moment you left. You don't have to worry about your friends missing you; no matter how many hours you generously stay with us, we'll get you to Tau Ceti at the time you're expected."

  "This is incredible."

  Glass shrugged. "It's science."

  "It's magic," said Keith.

  Glass shrugged again. "Same thing."

  "But--but--if you're really me, if you're really from Earth, then why did you screw up on the simulation?"

  "Pardon?"

  "The Earth simulation. It has errors in it. Fields full of four-leaf clover, something only ever found as the occasional mutant, and birds that I've never seen before."

  "Oh." The wind-chime sound. "My mistake. I took the simulation from some ancient recordings we had, but I was probably a bit sloppy. Let me just check with my reckoner . . . yup, my fault. It is a perfect simulation of Earth, but of Earth about one-point-two million years after you were born. The things that were out of place were species that hadn't yet evolved in your time. Come to think of it, you wouldn't have recognized the constellations, either, if I'd ever let it become nighttime."

  "My God," said Keith. "I hadn't even begun to think about evolution.

  If you're ten billion years older than me, then--then you're older than any form of life on Earth in my time."

  Glass nodded. "By your time, life had been evolving on Earth for four billion years. But there are Earth-descended life-forms in this time that are products of fourteen billion years of evolution. You'll never believe what daisies evolved into--or sea anemones, or the bacteria that caused whooping cough. In fact, I had lunch a few days ago with someone who evolved from whooping-cough bacteria."

  "You're kidding."

  "No, I'm not."

  "But it's incredible . . ."

  "No. It's just time. Lots and lots of time."

  "What about humans? Did humans continue to breed, to have children?

  Or did that stop when--when life prolongation was discovered?"

  "No, humanity continues to evolve and change. New humans--those who've been evolving for the last ten billion years--don't mix much with old humans like me.

  They're . . . quite different."

  "But if you're me, how did you change? I mean, your body is see-through."

  Glass shrugged. "Technology. Flesh and blood tends to wear out; this is better. In fact, I can reconfigure myself any way I want.

  Transparent is in style right now, but ! think the hint of aquamarine is quite classy, don't you?"

  Chapter XVI

  Rissa, Hek, and the rest of the alien-communications team continued to exchange messages with the darmat they'd dubbed Cat's Eye. The conversation became increasingly fluid as new words were added to the translation database, or old words had their meanings refined. When Keith next came onto the bridge, Rissa was in the middle of an apparently philosophic conversation with the giant being.

  The usual alpha-shift crew was on duty, except that the ExOps station was vacant: Rhombus was off doing something else, and his position had been slaved to a dolphin floating in the open pool on the starboard side of the bridge.

  "We have been unaware of your existence," Rissa said into the microphone stalk rising from her console. "We knew a large amount of invisible matter was out there, because of the gravitational effects, but we didn't know it was alive."

  "Two types of substance," replied the darmat in that French accent PHANTOM had assigned to him.

  "Yes," said Rissa. She looked up and waved a greeting at Keith as he took his seat next to her.

  "Not react sharply," said the Cat's Eye. "Only gravity the same."

  "That's correct," said Rissa. The all-encompassing hologram showed an enhanced view of Cat's Eye in front of the cluster of workstations.

  "Most like us," said the darmat.

  "The vast majority of all matter is like you, yes," replied Rissa.

  "Ignore you."

  "You've ignored us?"

  "Insignificant."

  "Were you aware that part of our type of substance was alive?"

  "No. Not occur to look for life on planets. So small you are."

  "We. wish to have a relationship with you," said Rissa.

  "Relationship?"

  "For mutual benefit. One plus one equals two. You plus us equals more than two."

  "Understand. More than the sum of the parts."

  Rissa smiled. "Exactly."

  "Relationship sensible."

  "Do you have a word for those with whom you have mutually beneficial relationships?"

  "Friends," said the darmat, PHANTOM translating the word the first time it had been received. "We call them friends."

  "We are friends," said Rissa.

  "Yes."

  "The kind of material you're made out of--the material we call dark matter--is all of it alive?"

  "No. Only tiny fraction."

  "But you say there has been living dark matter for a very long time?"

  "Since the beginning."

  "Beginning of what?"

  "Of--all the stars combined."

  "Of the totality of everything? We call that the universe."

  "Since the beginning of the universe."

  "That's an interesting point right there," said Jag, sitting on Keith's left. "The idea that the universe had a beginning--it did, of course, but how does it know that?

  Ask it about that."

  "What was the universe like in the beginning?" said Rissa into the mike.

  "Compressed," said the darmat. "Small beyond small.

  One place, no time."

  "The primordial atom," said Jag. "Fascinating. It's right, but I wonder how such a creature would deduce that?"

  "They communicate by radio," said Lianne, turning around at InOps to face Jag. "They probably reasoned it out the same way we did: from the cosmic microwave background and the redshifting of radio noise from distant galaxies'."

  Jag grunted.

  Rissa contin
ued her dialogue: "You have told us that neither you personally, Cat's Eye, nor this group of darmats is anywhere near that old. How do you know that darmat life existed all the way back to the beginning."

  "Had to," replied the darmat.

  Jag barked dismissively. "Philosophy," he said. "Not science. They just want to believe that."

  "We have not existed nearly that long," said Rissa into the microphone stalk. "We have not found any evidence for life of any type made out of our kind of matter that is more than four billion years old."

  pHANTOM converted the time expression into something the darmat could understand.

  "As said earlier, you are insignificant."

  Jag barked at PHANTOM. "Query: How was the translation for

  'insignificant' derived?"

  "Mathematically," said the computer in the appropriate language into each individual's earpiece. "We established that the difference between 3.7 and 4.0 was 'significant,' but that the difference between 3.99 and 4.00 was 'insignificant.""

  Jag looked at Rissa. "So in this context the word might convey a different sense. It might mean something meta-phoricai--a 'late arrival' could be equated with insignificance, for instance."

  Thor looked over his shoulder at the Waldahud and grinned. "Don't like the idea of being dismissed out of hand, eh?"

  "Don't be abrasive, human. It's simply that we have to be careful when generalizing the use of alien words. And besides, perhaps he's referring to the signaling probe. At less than five meters in length, it could indeed be termed insignificant."

  Rissa nodded and spoke into the mike. "When you say we are insignificant, are you referring to our sze.

  "Not size of speaking part. Not size of part that ejected speaking part."

  "So much for outsmarting him," said Thor, grinning. "He knows that the signaling probe came from this ship."

  Rissa covered the mike with her hand; the gesture was as good a signal as any to PHANTOM to temporarily halt transmission. "It doesn't matter, I guess." She removed her hand and spoke again to Cat's Eye.