Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by Charles Sheffield

  “Blackmail.”

  “Not at all. Consider. If you fail to help, and if human civilization falls, so too do the electronic data banks. You will then cease to exist, and so will any possibility of resurrecting Ana. This is not, in the language of game theory, a two-person zero-sum game between you and the rest of humanity. Only if humanity wins can you possibly win. In order for that maximum benefit to be reached, by you and by humanity, it is necessary for you yourself to suffer a period of great effort, with no guarantee of return on that effort. No guarantee, indeed, that your effort is even needed. It is conceivable that, without you, we might come up with an answer to our problem tomorrow. But I do not think so. We have tried everything that we know. Well, Drake?”

  Drake shook his head and stared out at the mutilated disk of the Galaxy. “You sure don’t sound much like Tom Lambert. Tom couldn’t have talked about zero-sum games to save his own life.”

  “This was your chosen medium of interaction, not ours. The composite that is addressing you is purely electronic. And talk of zero-sum games may be needed to save all our lives.”

  The scene beyond the window changed. Again it was the seacoast villa, looking across a bay tossed now by whitecaps beneath racing storm clouds.

  “You see,” Tom said. “You make my point. That is your vision, not ours. But we do not dispute its accuracy, as a possible harbinger of things to come.”

  Drake turned moodily to face the south, where a single sailboat was running for shelter. A squall struck as he watched, catching the little vessel and leaning its pink sails far over to starboard.

  “I think we ought to start over,” he said at last. “Tell me and show me everything, right from the beginning. Then I have a thousand questions.”

  Chapter 17

  Star Wars

  “I know more than Apollo,

  For oft when he lies sleeping

  I see the stars at bloody wars

  In the wounded welkin weeping.”

  Drake could have anticipated the problem. Composites came in all sizes and types, remote and nearby, wise and foolish, planetary and free-space, organic and inorganic. Their constant interactions blurred the lines of identity, until it was not clear which elements were speaking or which were in control. Since he saw that problem in others, he had to assume that the same thing might happen to him when he worked with them. Yet he must, at all costs, maintain his individual character and agenda.

  He decided that he had to create a private record of his own thoughts and actions. It seemed not a luxury or a personal indulgence, but a necessity.

  The irony of the whole situation was not lost on him. He had been a lifelong and dedicated pacifist, hating all things military — so much so that until Ana went into the cryowomb and he was desperate for money, he would not consider military music commissions, no matter how much they offered. Now, so far in the future that he did not like to think about it, he was an aggression consultant to the whole Galaxy.

  His private thought: the incompetent and the ignorant are now leading the innocent; but he did not offer that comment to anyone else.

  “What have you tried?” Drake was in working session with Tom Lambert. He was sure that he couldn’t really help, but he was also sure that the composites wouldn’t accept a negative answer. More than that, for Ana’s sake he could not accept it. He had to pretend, to himself more than anyone, that he knew what he was doing.

  “Drake, we have tried many things. We sent S-wave signals to that sector of the Galaxy. There was never any reply—”

  “Back up, Tom. S-wave signals?”

  “Fast signals. Superluminal signals, that employ an S-wave carrier to advance at high multiples of light speed.”

  “You can travel faster than light? I thought that was impossible.”

  “It is, for material objects. We have superluminal capability for signals only. Just as well that we do, because we really need it. How else could a composite with widespread components operate as a unit? Anyway, we sent fast signals to the silent region, but no reply was ever received. We wondered if the problem might be that the other entities could not detect superluminal messages. So we sent subluminal signals and inorganic probes. We waited for millions of years, knowing that all the time more of our stellar systems were becoming mute. Nothing returned. We sent ships bearing organic units, and ships carrying full composites. Nothing has ever come back.”

  “Were your ships… armed?” Drake had to hunt the data banks for that final word, but apparently it gave Tom even more trouble. There was a long silence.

  “Armed?” Tom said at last. He sounded perplexed.

  “Equipped with weapons.” Drake wondered. Had aggressive impulses been stamped out completely, as an impediment to steady progress and the colonization of the Galaxy? When Tom didn’t answer, he added, “Weapons are things able to inflict damage. Weapons would permit a ship to defend itself if it were to be attacked.”

  Tom Lambert didn’t like that, either. His image flickered and wavered, as though whatever was communicating had suffered a temporary breakdown. Confusion bled in from the clamoring host of minds in the background.

  “They had no ‘weapons.’ ” Tom was steadying again. “There are no ‘weapons.’ The details of the concept have been relegated to remote third-level storage, and it is poorly defined even there. What are you suggesting?”

  “Something very simple. This galaxy is being—” Now Drake had to pause. He wanted to say ‘invaded,’ but that word had apparently vanished from the language.

  “Something outside the Galaxy is moving into it,” he said at last. “Do you agree?”

  “So it would appear.”

  “And that something is displacing human civilization.”

  “Yes. That is our fear, although we have no direct proof. But what could be doing this?”

  “I have no idea. That’s something we’re going to find out. You’ve been making too many assumptions, Tom. One is that you are seeing something intelligent at work; something with a developed technology.”

  “We made no such assumptions.”

  “Of course you did. Not explicitly, but you did it. You say you sent signals and you received no reply — but even to expect a reply presumes that something out there is able to detect a signal, comprehend a signal, and reply to a signal. Suppose that the entity moving into our Galaxy has no intelligence at all?”

  “Then we will never be able to communicate with it. We are doomed.”

  “Why?” Drake, in spite of his own reservations about his ability to help, was becoming annoyed with the composites. They were such a spineless lot, ready to lie down and die before they were even touched. “Why are you doomed? You don’t need to communicate, you know. You just need to stop the— the—” Again, the need for a word that did not exist. The composites had not named the problem. “The blight,” he said at last. “The marauder, the Shiva, the destroyer, the whatever. we choose to call it. I don’t know if it’s intelligent or nonintelligent, but it’s changing the Galaxy in a way that’s deadly to humans. Even if the Shiva don’t mean to kill, they are silencing stellar systems by the billion. Never mind understanding what’s happening. That would be nice, but the main thing is, we have to defend ourselves against the effects.”

  “But we have no idea how to do that.”

  “I’m going to tell you how.” The amazing thing was that he was starting to believe his own words. It was a chilling reflection on the humans of earlier times. No one, no matter how much the pacifist, could in his own era go from child to adult without becoming steeped in the vocabulary, ideas, and procedures of war. Even games were a form of combat, using the language of conflict. Drake knew more than he realized about the theory and practice of warfare.

  “We have to do a few things for ourselves,” he went on, “before we can consider external action. First, we have to create and become familiar with a new language. You must learn to speak War.” Drake said the last word in English. “You need to be able
to think war, and before you can think it you have to be able to speak it. I will provide the concepts, you will deal with the mechanics of language creation. All right?”

  Silence from Tom. Drake took it as reluctant assent, and went on. “Second, we must form something called a chain of command. You were right when you told me that this form of communication between us limits the rate of information transfer. We have to change the system. I’m sure I can’t deal directly with billions of composites, so we need a new structure. I will deal with no more than — how many? Let’s say six — I’ll work with half a dozen composites like you. Then each of you will work with six more, and so on to successive tiers. How many levels will be necessary to fit every composite into such a framework?”

  “Nineteen levels will be enough.”

  Tom’s reply was instantaneous. Drake tried to do the inverse calculation, and failed. Six to the nineteenth. How many billions, how many trillions? Let’s just say, a mind-boggling number.

  And he was supposed to direct the actions of every one of them. How? He had no idea. Composers were not expected to run things. Had any musician in history ever managed a group bigger than an orchestra? The only one he could think of was the pianist Paderewski, who early in the twentieth century interrupted his performing career to become prime minister of Poland. Great pianist, average politician.

  He pressed on, before worries and irrelevant thoughts like that could take over.

  “Third, I must learn your science and technology. I don’t mean I have to understand it, because I’m quite sure I can’t. But I have to know what the technology can do. In return, I’ll tell you what weapons are, and you must learn what weapons do, and how to make them. I’ll warn you, you won’t like what you hear — any more than I’ll enjoy telling you.”

  “We’ll learn.” Tom was calm now. He even shrugged his shoulders and ran his hands through his mop of red hair. “When we asked for help, you know, we didn’t assume that we’d be sitting around doing nothing. And we didn’t assume we’d enjoy our part of it.”

  “I’ll go further. You won’t. Let’s begin by defining the first level of the chain of command. As I said, I can’t interface with you all the time, and I certainly can’t interface directly with umpteen billion composites.”

  “Six hundred trillion.”

  “Thanks.” Six hundred trillion. It was worse than Drake had thought. “So we set up the chain of command, then we’ll talk about self-defense. You ought to send that information immediately to the section of the Galaxy likely to be the next one threatened. It might help, and it can’t hurt.”

  He would prove disastrously wrong on that last point, but he didn’t know it.

  “Self-defense?” Tom said.

  “Don’t worry about it. You won’t have to harm anything that doesn’t try to harm you. You’ll find self-defense easy. But

  after that it may start to get nasty.”

  Just how could a planet or a space colony defend itself from outside attack? How could humans counterattack or make a preemptive defensive strike? How did one fight something unknown? Drake rummaged for long-buried ideas, things he had read when he was young and never expected to use or need. His mind was disturbingly well-stocked with them. So much for his pacifist self-image.

  Until Ana went to the cryowomb and he was scrambling for money, he had resisted the idea of producing any form of professional description. He had been pretty snooty about it. What could words possibly say, he said to himself and to anyone else who would listen, about the ability to write interesting music?

  Times changed. Now he could produce an intriguing resume: Drake Merlin; composer; performer; would-be pacifist; and Supreme Commander of Combined Galactic Forces. •

  •

  • The easiest part seemed to be the creation of a chain of command. He needed to worry about just the first level. Even so, he learned within minutes that he could only interface with a composite if it simulated an individual with whom he was familiar and comfortable. That narrowed the options enormously; especially since any kind of Ana simulation was out of the question.

  First, though, he had to select a command headquarters. That wasn’t hard; he had returned to consciousness so often through the ages in the little villa overlooking the Bay of Naples and Tyrrhenian Sea, it was starting to feel like home. He fixed it in his mind, furnished for his own comfort.

  Then it was time to define his principal assistants. Tom Lambert assured him that all he had to do was think of the person, and the composites would handle the rest. Tom didn’t say how, and Drake didn’t ask. He just set to work.

  Tom, of course. And Milton. The Servitor had abandoned the original wheeled sphere and whisk broom of many billions of years ago, but it was the form most familiar to Drake. Milton might as well stay in that shape. Cass Leemu, who had tried to teach him science so long ago — and failed — would be his chief scientific adviser. And Melissa Bierly. He wondered about that choice, until she appeared at the table. She was not the woman he had last met, sane and contented and the lover and companion of the cloned Ana, but the mercurial and mad Melissa as she had been at her first creation. War was a form of insanity. Drake needed an element of madness. He could see it now, in those brilliant sapphire eyes.

  Trismon Sorel and Ariel appeared briefly, but they would not hold their shapes. It was Drake’s own mind, rejecting them for its own reasons: either he did not know them well enough, or they did not fit his present needs.

  He was not happy with the two who completed the half dozen. Par Leon had appeared first, as unwarlike as a human could be. Maybe that meant he was close in temperament to Drake, who needed him for that reason. But then there had to be a balance.

  Drake called on someone he hated. Mel Bradley had been the scourge of his childhood; short, hyperactive, hotheaded, ready to fight over nothing. He had sneered at Drake, calling him a girl and a soft-head sissy who liked stupid poetry. In their one confrontation as eleven-year-olds, he had given Drake a black eye. After that Drake went out of his way to avoid him, without ever quite admitting that he was scared. Now Mel, adult and wary, glowered at Drake from the other end of the room.

  Six assistants. He looked along the polished table and considered the result of his efforts. How much reality was there in any of this? The others had been created out of his own stored consciousness, plus the combined contents of the data banks. All of them (including Drake himself!) consisted of nothing more than a random movement of electrons. But hadn’t that always been true of thoughts in every brain, whether organic or inorganic, wetware or hardware?

  And if Drake was not fully satisfied with his chosen assistants, hadn’t that always been true of all leaders? He remembered what the Duke of Wellington said, after he reviewed his own poorly trained and ill-equipped troops and before they went into battle: “I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but by God they terrify me.”

  Drake never expected to see the rest of his own “troops.” All instructions would go out, and all reports come in, through the chosen six. That might be a problem. Old wars had been plagued by officers who restricted access to their generals and told them only what they wanted to hear: “The fort is impregnable…” “The morale of the men remains excellent…” “Strategic bombing will weaken the enemy to the point where their resistance is impossible…” “The adversary’s losses far exceed our own…” “One more increase in troop strength will turn the tide in our favor.”

  And the slaughter had rolled on.

  Well, with luck, the composites would have forgotten how to lie. They should have no interest in telling Drake only what they thought might please him.

  But in fact, none of this could ever please him. He told himself, over and over, why he was doing this: only in order that, someday, he and Ana could be together again.

  The next task was to divide up the workload among his chosen helpers.

  “You, Cass.” Drake wondered how long it would be before giving orders ca
me easily to him. At the moment he hated it. “I want you to produce the science and technology summary for me. I have to know what’s available now, because that’s going to be the basis for our weapons development. Milton, you will be the expert on alien life-forms, anywhere in the Galaxy. Par Leon, I want you to learn exactly which stars have been affected by the Shiva, and tell me which ones are now in most danger. Mel, you are in charge of offense. That means you’ll be planning counterattacks. You ought to love that. Melissa, you’ll be my expert on the Shiva themselves — everything that humans know, I want to know. Tom, as my general support, you are to remain flexible, ready to tackle anything that comes up.

  “Any questions?”

  “Yes.” It was Melissa. Her reply stopped Drake cold. It seemed to him he had been perfectly clear and he wasn’t expecting questions. He frowned at her. “What’s the problem?”

  “I’m confused. It seems to me that my task is already finished.”

  “You have a report on the Shiva?” Even with the uncanny computing speed of the composites, that seemed impossible.

  “In a manner of speaking. And so do you. We know all there is to be known.”

  She didn’t sound confused. She sounded sure of herself, the confident, competent, all-seeing Melissa that Drake had known of old. He groaned inwardly. They had hardly begun, and already he sensed trouble.

  Melissa was right. Her briefing took many minutes, but the main conclusion could be summarized in seconds.

  One stellar system, far out beyond the main galactic rim, had ceased to communicate with all other humans thirty-three million years earlier. That was the first. The change had been noted, but it drew no attention. Composites and civilizations often chose to go their own ways, even as Earth had gone its own way and withdrawn from the solar system back in what was now considered the dawn of history.

  Over the next several thousand years, half a dozen more systems fell silent. They were in the same remote galactic region as the first one. Still, no one was worried. They were presumed to be part of the same social experiment.