Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by Charles Sheffield

  And that gave a partial answer to his other question: When? Unless some method had been discovered to travel faster than light, he was at least hundreds of thousands of years beyond the time of his downloading. That, however, represented an absolute lower bound. His own feelings, irrationally combined with the sense of infinite age and weariness in his body, convinced him that he had moved many tens of millions of years into the future.

  His companions, machines or bioengineered creatures, had waited patiently at his side. They were at ease in near or total vacuum. Maybe they were the “people” of the future, wearing superior physical forms. Unless he found a way to talk to them, he would never know.

  They had no limbs, no eyes, no visible way of providing or receiving a message. Yet clearly they were able to communicate with each other. All their efforts to keep him inside the membrane until he had a suit had been tightly coordinated.

  He stooped down and picked up one of the little umbrella crawlers. He hoped they would not misunderstand his motives.

  The downward movement made his head swim. There was something awfully wrong with his resurrected body. Instead of becoming more at ease, he was experiencing greater pain and discomfort with every minute. He waited until his balance at last returned, then examined the crawler.

  It had seven-fold symmetry. There were seven thin “ribs” that radiated from a central boss. At the very end of each rib, on the upper side, a small darker spot gleamed blackish green. It had the round structure of an eye, or a photoelectric cell. The crawlers could probably see him, and each other. It would simplify their acting in concert.

  Beneath each rib was a small opening, no bigger than a fingernail. He could not examine the apertures easily in the position that he was holding the crawler, but it had been sitting motionless and unresisting in his grasp. He inverted it. It did not react. The bottom was seamless and uniform, the same deep black as the upper surface. At the middle he saw another and bigger hole, as wide as his thumb. That one was empty, but at the opening of each of the other holes he could make out a blue-green gleam. When he tilted the crawler to get a better look, he saw a stirring of movement. After a few seconds, one of the turquoise insect machines partially showed itself at the mouth of the hole.

  He reached out and eased it clear. The move was almost one of desperation. He was sicker than he had realized on first awakening. His fingers had no sensations, and the pain in his arms and legs seemed to reach farther up his limbs. He also felt, nauseated. When he belched, a foul stench rose from his stomach and filled his suit. It was the smell of decaying meat, the stink of his own rotting insides.

  He brought the little blue-green carapace close to his face, but his eyes were failing as fast as the rest of him. No matter how much he peered through the thin layer of his suit, all he saw was an unfocused colored blur of tiny legs and body. After a few seconds he gave up. He reached down and carefully placed the insect form on the rocky surface in front of him. He half expected it to scuttle off and hide within one of the other crawlers, but instead it ran aimlessly around in circles for half a minute, then froze.

  Did each little blue-green robot, if that’s what they were, report to its own home crawler? Drake bent down, with swimming vision and swirling dizziness, and placed the crawler a few feet from the motionless turquoise glint. A high-pitched clicking and humming sounded at once. The lost beetle hurried back to the crawler, and disappeared. It seemed as though the one housed the other, at least most of the time; if they were bioengineered forms, they must be symbiotic.

  The crawlers were moving again, all together across a smooth terrain. Drake followed. The surface was so uniform and highly polished that he wondered if the whole world was an artifact. The high curvature showed that the object must be no more than a few tens of kilometers across. Making such a thing would be trivial to the technology that far earlier had been able to turn Uranus into a new sun and change the whole face of the solar system.

  He sniffed and was aware again of the charnel-house smell of his own body within his suit. The sniff was one of self-disgust — and not only at his smell. He ought to have learned over the centuries and millennia not to make flying leaps of logic. What proof was there that the progress of technology had been uniform, always in the direction of advancing capabilities? He already knew of three eras in which the definition of “progress” had changed, and there had been time since then for a hundred or a thousand such transitions. Certainly, nothing that he had seen in this resurrection suggested an orderly progression of civilization from Ariel’s time to this one. Other than basic astronomy, everything seemed beyond his knowledge and comprehension.

  And where was Milton? Drake thought of his Servitor for the first time since his own resurrection. He could not imagine Milton deserting him, for as long as the Servitor possessed consciousness. It was more evidence of the passage of time while he had drowsed in electronic storage.

  The crawlers had been heading steadily around the curve of the surface. The top of a building was appearing on the horizon. As he came closer Drake saw that it formed a squat truncated pyramid, its shiny gold walls jutting upward against the star-strewn sky. The crawlers led him toward an open door, about two feet square, sitting at the building’s base. It was barely big enough, but Drake lay on his belly and inched forward, following the crawlers through and up a gently spiraling tunnel. Another translucent wall lay at the end. He pushed through that membrane and found himself in a dimly lit chamber about twenty feet square and six feet high. The floor was more of the sticky, milky sheet on which he had first awakened. The walls had foot-wide round apertures spaced along them, windows providing views of the smooth outside surface and the dazzling star field. The center of the chamber was occupied by a transparent column filled with pink bubbling liquid. Scores of the black umbrella crawlers littered the floor, while half a dozen were slotted into a set of narrow letter-box slits that rose vertically against one wall.

  Drake stood up, his suited head touching the low ceiling. It was not easy to balance on a surface that bowed beneath his feet like a great air balloon, and apparently standing was in any case the wrong thing to do. The crawlers immediately became noisy. Drake heard a frenzy of clicks and chirps and hisses. The nearest ones came across to him, swarmed up onto his body, and pushed at him with their thin spokes. It was enough to throw him off his uncertain balance, and he toppled lightly to the cushioned floor. The crawlers settled by his side, silent as long as he did not attempt to rise.

  He wanted to explore the other parts of the building, and tackle the difficult problem of communicating with the crawlers. If humans still exist, take me to them. How could he tell them that, or anything else, as long as he lay useless? He had to find a common language of gestures. He was sitting up again, ignoring the protests of the crawlers, when the whole room started a gentle vibration.

  He lay back on the floor, thinking that the pyramid might be some sort of ground transportation device. Was it trundling them to another part of the surface, where he would learn what was happening? He turned his head and stared out of the nearest wall aperture.

  The outside surface was moving. They were traveling not along it, but away from it. He could see farther around the curve of the world, and more of the star field.

  He had been close; not a method for ground transportation, yet still a transportation system. Drake lay silent, pressed to the soft floor. The squat pyramid accelerated harder away from the surface and headed for open space.

  The ship was more proof, if proof were needed, of profound change that could hardly be described as progress. The technique of inertia shedding, which Drake had never understood, had been in use when he fled to Canopus more than fourteen million years ago. Now that secret was lost, or ignored. He felt in full each change in the ship’s acceleration, by the change to his own apparent weight.

  He still lay with his head to one side, facing the nearest porthole. In the first seconds of flight, the port had filled with an intolerable blue-
white brightness that forced him to close his bleary and aching eyes. He realized after a few seconds what it must be. They had risen far enough from the surface to be exposed to the light of a nearby star.

  Think positively. That could be good news. With stars came planets, and perhaps people. He waited patiently, until the glare of light swung away from him to illuminate the rest of the chamber. He studied its color. The star that produced such light must be hotter, brighter, and younger than Sol. Unfortunately, that told him nothing about his particular location — there must be a billion stars like this in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds.

  The ship’s acceleration dropped dramatically. It was the signal for the crawlers to begin moving. About twenty of them moved to his side and disgorged hundreds of what Drake thought of as “workers.” The little turquoise insects moved onto his body and systematically began to remove his suit. More good news. He was heading away from the near vacuum of the little planetoid, presumably to a place where there would be breathable air. That suggested a planet.

  But there was bad news, too. Drake examined his naked body as the transparent shielding was stripped away by the workers. It was visible proof of what he already knew from the way that he was feeling. Instead of being resurrected in a body that was stronger, fitter, and more long-lived than his old one, he now resided in a failing wreck. He could see the blackish green of gangrene on his fingers and toes. There was no feeling there, and soft tissue was already sloughing away. The rest of his hands and feet were cold and blue tinged. His forearms and calves were red and they felt warm. They were in the preliminary stages of mortification.

  The internal changes were worse. He had not seen anything like food since he was resurrected, but in any case he knew that he would not be able to eat. His teeth felt loose in his head. His belly churned with gas, and there was an unspeakable taste in his mouth. His lungs fought harder for air with every breath. His eyes saw less clearly, their vision spotted with random dark patches.

  It was not difficult to reach an overall assessment. He had been embodied in a near corpse, and the necrosis was spreading throughout his whole body. If he was to survive, he had to reach a place where technicians could work on him the sort of medical miracles that had once been possible. And he had to do it quickly.

  Drake lifted himself onto his hands and knees and moved over to the porthole. This time the crawlers did not object. Three of them crabbed their way along at his side as he placed his nose close to the window. The surface was sticky and smelled like acetone.

  He looked out. The planetoid where he had been resurrected was invisible, far behind them. To his left, the blue-white star dominated the heavens, outshining all the scattered millions of the Cloud cluster. The star loomed in the sky, three times the size of Sol from Earth. They were too close. Habitable planets, if there were any, ought to be farther out.

  He looked, but it was an impossible task. A planet would be one more spark of light among the millions. A computer, attached to a telescope and observing for many days, might distinguish a planet from the starry background by comparing images and noting the planet’s motion over time relative to the slowly moving stars. But Drake did not have a computer; he did not have a telescope; and he was sure that he did not have many days.

  Just as he concluded that finding a planet would be impossible, he saw a dark shape biting into the edge of the blue-white sun. He decided that he was indeed seeing a planet, then one second later realized that it could not be so. The shape was wrong — a sharp-edged oblong, rather than a circle — and it was growing in size far too fast. The ship could be no more than a few kilometers away from it. The object was far smaller than the planetoid that they had left a few minutes earlier. It was probably no more than a hundred meters along its longest side.

  The ship drifted nearer, its drive powered down to provide a tiny final deceleration. As it came alongside the dark oblong, Drake could take a closer look. The surface was a roughened and pitted black, nothing like the shiny gold of the ship. It seemed perfectly flat and featureless, but presumably the crawlers knew better. Half a dozen of them had wandered across to the entry tunnel. They were hovering there as though waiting for him. There had been no attempt to provide him with another suit.

  He wasn’t sure how much physical effort he could manage, but he had no choice. He lay on the floor and inched his way painfully through the white membrane and on into the spiraling tunnel. He could feel the rotting skin of his naked chest sticking to the tunnel floor, then tearing free as he pushed forward. At one point he could go no farther until the crawlers, behind and beside and ahead of him, eased him along through a tight spot.

  They emerged into a sounding, cavernous chamber. It was totally sealed, totally dark, and icily cold. Not even starlight penetrated. Drake, shivering and listening to the sound of his own labored breath, did not know what to do. At last the crawlers accompanying him began to glow. A line of green light like a ghostly bioluminescence showed along each of their seven ribs. As their light brightened and Drake’s eyes adjusted, he was able to make out something of his surroundings.

  The fittings of the great chamber showed that it had once held scores or hundreds of identical objects, serried ranks of them running off into the distance. That had been long, long ago. The objects had all gone. Dust filled every marked furrow where something had once rested. Dust in a deep layer covered everything.

  Drake sagged with weakness and disappointment. There was nothing for him here, no reason for the crawlers to have brought him so far and with such effort. But they were once more moving forward, then waiting as though expecting him to follow.

  He could barely propel himself, even in such a negligible field. He dragged himself along for a few yards with his arms through the thick dust; then he was forced to pause and rest. The crawlers came to either side, lifting his body and easing it along. They were helping him, but why?

  Where were they taking him? Why did they think he might want to see it, whatever it was?

  He was not resisting, but neither was he helping. He simply allowed himself to be carried, eyes almost closed, until at last the crawlers released their hold and eased away from his body.

  Your move, that said. But it was no move he could imagine.

  He forced his weary eyes to open. In front of his face, no more than a few inches away, stood a vertical wall of dark metal. He raised his head, and saw that it ended two feet or so above his own recumbent eye level. He made a supreme effort, reached up to the top of the wall, and lifted himself. He peered over the edge.

  It was not a wall. It was the side of a big tank. And not just any storage tank. He recognized it, this was a cryotank. The seals had been broken, the outer and inner lids removed.

  He peered inside. It was empty. He stood, dazed and bewildered. A cryotank.

  And, a few yards farther along, another. Just the two of them. He held on to the tank side for support, and clawed and scrabbled his way around toward the other tank.

  It, too, stood with the seals broken. The outer and inner lids had been removed.

  But it was not empty. Drake stared, eyes failing and mind reeling. There was a body inside. A dried and mummified body that he recognized.

  It was Ana’s body. He knew the color of the hair, the shape of the beloved skull that showed its bones beneath the taut and yellow skin. Ana’s body.

  He wanted to groan, but his throat was too agonizingly sore. Not really Ana, but the empty husk of what she had once been. It was the end of all hope, the end of everything.

  Then the remnants of reason came back. He should not be here, standing by an ancient cryotank. He had been downloaded into electronic storage. His resurrection had been promised from that electronic storage, into a new, cloned body. And Ana, too, had moved to electronic storage.

  So what was this tank, and why was he here?

  Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. These were the original cryotanks, the ones that had held him and Ana.

>   “Each tank has its own long-lived power source, able to preserve a cryocorpse for an extremely long time without external support… The cryowomb with its cryotanks is already at the extreme edge of the Oort Cloud, and it is steadily drifting farther out to interstellar space. You and Ana have long been its only occupants.”

  It had never occurred to Drake that those original cryotanks might be left to wander wherever the winds of space chose to take them, but why not? It would not have occurred to Ariel and his composite to destroy the tank and the womb, since from their point of view the only important versions of Drake and Ana were the ones in electronic storage.

  Drifting farther out to interstellar space — and farther yet. How many millions, or more likely billions, of years had it taken for the wandering flotsam of the cryowomb to find its way beyond the Galaxy, all the way to the Magellanic Cloud? How many millions more before it was found by the exploring crawlers?

  No wonder that Drake had seen the discontinuity of technology development everywhere. It was not discontinuity — it was an independent development. The crawlers were aliens. There was no connection between them and human civilization. Drake was probably their first evidence of the existence of humans.

  And no wonder, either, that the attempt at resurrection by the umbrella crawlers and the workers had produced such an ailing, sickly, and imperfect result. Without prior knowledge of human physiology or the correct thawing procedure, it was a miracle that the umbrella crawlers had done as well as they did. Drake had been revivified, even if only for a short time.

  Or maybe they had succeeded as well as anything ever could. Drake had been downloaded to electronic storage precisely because cryotank storage was unreliable over long time periods. He had no idea how long it had been since he joined Ana in the cryowomb. Long enough for resurrection to be totally unreliable? Long enough to make his present disintegration inevitable?