Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by Charles Sheffield

  “On the third world, fifteen thousand light-years away, there were large artifacts and all the signs of sometime intelligence. But the creators had been destroyed, apparently by their own actions. No other life-form had the potential for near-term self-awareness.

  “On the fourth world—”

  “Wait a minute. How many targets have we visited?”

  “This is the one hundred and twenty-fourth. I saw no point in resurrecting you on any earlier occasion. You are not interested in extinct intelligence, nor in possible future intelligence, but in present intelligence. We have never before found evidence of that.”

  “And now you have?”

  “I believe so.”

  “And how long since the search began?”

  “We have been traveling for slightly more than two million years.”

  “Fine.” Drake decided that he had become blasй. Two million years no longer impressed him. To get his attention now, you had to talk billions. “So what’s the problem?”

  “When we were approaching the current target star, I examined it from far orbit and concluded that one of the planets was remarkably Earth-like. Its atmosphere told of the presence of oxygen-breathing life, and as we came closer I observed several characteristic markers of intelligence: long linear and rectangular surface features, modified river courses, patterns of nighttime lights, and cluster patterns supporting little or no plant life.”

  “That sounds right. Roads and dams and power and cities. Did you make detail scans?”

  “I did so as we approached closer, images to the meter level of detail and beyond. ”

  “So you know the shape of whoever was doing all the work. Why didn’t you put me into that form?”

  “Had I been able to find such a form, I would have done so. As it is, I found it necessary to invoke the default option of your original shape for the embodiment.” The wall in front of Drake became a display screen. “Observe. We are first looking from far away, on our approach orbit.”

  The scene was the whole planet, seen from space. The ball glowed a mottled red and pink, from its banded midsection up to the small circles of white around the poles.

  “Are those water-ice polar caps?” Drake had the irrelevant thought that he was looking at a gigantic Christmas tree ornament. He was bubbling over with excess energy, and his mind was ready to accept strange images.

  “Correct. The mean temperature is that of Earth during one of your planet’s warmer periods.”

  “I can’t see much from this distance.”

  “Have patience. The images that you will soon see derive from lower orbit.”

  The pink sphere on the display was growing. It was possible to imagine dark lines on its surface, scattered close to the equator. Drake waited. He knew the tendency of the human eye to play “connect the dots” and discern linear patterns where there were none. His thoughts spun away to the far-off past. Who was it, long before his own time, who had been fooled by that built-in physiological quirk of the human brain and had drawn maps of nonexistent Martian “canals”?

  Except that this was no optical illusion. The linear features were real, growing in clarity every minute. As the ship drew closer to the planet, the display could no longer hold the full image of the world. The focus moved to a line, dark and straight, at center screen. It was bordered by colored rectangles and triangles. To Drake’s eye and imagination the line was a road across a Kansas flatland. The broad fields were different shades of red, a child’s quilt with bright patches that ranged from light pink to deepest crimson. The yellow brick road had turned dark brown, but it ran through farmlands of fairy-tale color.

  The scale that accompanied the display gave the lie to the illusion. The “road” was a kilometer wide. The quilt was monstrous, each of its patches the size of a county of old Earth. Scattered darker dots within the patches were big enough to be towns.

  The field of view zoomed in toward a narrower black thread at the center of the broad swath of road. Drake could see that the edges of the patchwork quilt were not regular. They were broken and random, the boundaries intruding on each other. The pink had spread in places onto the darker swath, like crabgrass invading an untended lawn.

  The black thread must surely be water. Unlike on Mars, these canals were real. The line of banks ran ruler straight across the surface. Close to the water’s edge, every few kilometers, a five-sided open tower of girders stretched toward the sky. The display closed in on one.

  “This is too tall to be built on this planet with natural materials. Carbon composites are essential for its building and continued stability, which implies a reasonably advanced technology. Technology implies intelligence. But where is that intelligence?”

  Drake recalled his “firebreak,” the millions of human worlds sacrificed and emptied to escape the Shiva. Had other galaxies been invaded? Were alien species trying the same delaying tactic, abandoning this world to slow an enemy’s advance? Who was the Roman general famous for his scorched-earth policy and refusal to fight the Carthaginians directly?

  “One might conclude that the intelligence is here.”

  The display homed in on a lighter-colored area by the canal. It was a clearing, a couple of hundred meters across, and it stood in the shadow of one of the great pentagonal structures. Drake was at last able to pick out surface life-forms.

  The flat semicircle was bordered on its straight edge by water, and on its curved perimeter by a skimpy fence. A group of thirty or forty objects like oversized pink snails clustered against the boundary. They were creeping steadily along the fence. A dozen others, slightly smaller and faster moving, surrounded them.

  A group of twenty other beings crouched close to the water’s edge. They were dark red, with many legs, and they surrounded a dark, shallow pit in the surface. On closer inspection Drake could see that they came in three types. The ones on the very edge of the pit were the biggest, four times the size of the outermost group members.

  “This depressed area” — a bright point of green, vivid against the pinks and browns, appeared on the display in the middle of the pit — “is revealed by infrared imaging to be well above ambient temperature. I assume that it is a breeding pit, kept warm by rotting vegetation. It is not hot enough to be a cooking pit.”

  Drake thought that was an odd thing for the ship to say — the presence of the vast pentagonal towers spoke of a mastery of technology far beyond the use of fire. But he could see (or imagine) a consistent picture in what was going on in the clearing: herd animals, grazing, held by the fence and protected and chivied along by the equivalent of sheepdogs. The red creatures might be the breeding phase of either of the other types.

  But where was the intelligence that had made the great towers? A primitive breeding/grazing society as he knew it could never produce such a technological tour de force.

  “This settlement seems typical.” The display scanned along the canal to show numerous colonies, each one close to a

  tower. “The pattern is repeated in hundreds of places. Each time, the same organisms are seen. But now — observe.”

  One of the towers had toppled over. It sprawled the skeleton of its length across the canal and far beyond, into the patchwork of open fields. It seemed intact after its collapse, vouching for the strength of the materials used to make it.

  “There is no colony here. Every other tower has one. And see this.”

  The scene on the display was moving again, swinging away from the canal to a spider’s web of converging roads. At the web center stood buildings, some low and dark roofed, others reaching for heaven like the pentagonal towers. Plants like long vines grew over the low roofs or wound around the towers’ bottom girders. There was no sign of life anywhere.

  “Buildings. Roads. Power stations. Lighted cities. Communications, unless the towers serve some other uses. There is civilization. But where are the beings who did all this ? I would welcome your interpretation, before I offer mine.”

  “I can’t e
ven make a guess. Did you see signs of life or artifacts on any other planet of this system?”

  “None.”

  “So they don’t have spaceflight. Their development must have been enormously different from ours. What do you think is happening?”

  “I have one piece of evidence that you have not yet seen. This is an image taken at night.”

  The bright cities stood out like clusters of jewels. The roads that joined them were invisible, but as Drake watched, lines of bright blue intermittently flashed along their lengths.

  “I have enhanced the pulse in duration and lowered its apparent speed to a level where human eyes can follow. What you are seeing is a burst of information carried by optical laser. Given the absence of intelligent organic life, it suggests a simple explanation: This civilization has passed the industrial phase. It is now wholly concerned with information transfer among its separate elements. Physical transfer of material is no longer necessary.”

  “What about the beings who did the original development?”

  “I assume that they went to inorganic form and were downloaded into a planetary network.”

  “One that takes no notice of us?”

  “If they never discovered spaceflight, they may deny even the possibility of off-world existence. The question is, What do we do now? We need a working force to build an S-wave signal detector, but the intelligence of this planet has never worked in space. Also, like my own intelligence, it may be unable to appear in corporeal form. How can we determine if that is so?”

  “Since they don’t respond to our signals, I’ll have to go down and take a look. Chances are there’s nothing useful, but if this is the best you’ve seen in a hundred and twenty-four tries, we have to make sure.”

  “Not the best one. The only one.”

  “How many more hours of daylight?”

  “Unless we elect to change longitude, there will be six hours before darkness.”

  Drake glanced at the sun, uncannily close in color to Sol. “I might be back by then. If not, I’ll spend the night in the lander. Is it ready for use?”

  “It is waiting.”

  “How much will you have to change me, before I can survive on the surface?”

  “Some slight changes were made during your embodiment. This world is close to being an Earth look-alike. I would recommend, however, that you proceed with caution in ingesting native substances.”

  “Don’t eat the food and don’t drink the water. Sure. What else?”

  “I believe no other changes are essential. ”

  “You knew what I was going to decide, didn’t you?”

  “I had suspicions.”

  Drake wondered what the ship had been doing during the two million years in which he was dormant. Studying him, more than likely. Was there any way that a ship’s brain could become smarter, or at least more cunning, over time? If experience worked for people, might it work for inorganic brains?

  “You know what to do if I don’t return, and the signals from me stop?”

  “Regrettably, if you do not return I will be able to do nothing to help you. If you do not send instructions, I will wait for one year in orbit around this planet. Then the ship will go on to the next target star and continue the search. I will seek to recover the lander, if that is in any way possible.”

  Drake nodded. Nothing about recovering his body. There was only one lander. Whereas he …

  He was completely expendable. If he came back, the Drake Merlin held in the ship’s storage would be updated to reflect his experiences. On his next embodiment he would feel full continuity of consciousness.

  If he didn’t come back, a copy of him would still exist on board the ship. His next embodiment, at some new target world, would feel exactly as he felt: like the one and only real Drake Merlin. He would experience continuity of consciousness, although he would have no memory of a visit to this system.

  Drake had a stranger thought yet. Another copy of him, or a hundred others, could be made at any time. Right now, he could ask for duplicates. Why not go down there with someone he could totally rely on — himself?

  He sighed. He had too much adrenaline in his system. The sooner that he worked it off, the better.

  “All right. I’m ready for the lander.”

  Drake had in his augmented memory a working knowledge of all known languages, visual, aural, tactile, and pheromonal.

  How useful were they likely to be? He was not optimistic as the pinnace completed its braking phase and floated toward a landing a few kilometers west of one of the settlements. It was easy to be fooled by a planet superficially like Earth, but he might be ten billion light-years away. Every life-form in his native galaxy could be a close cousin compared with this.

  He put the lander down on an open field at the edge of one of the deserted “towns.” There was life here, but the forms were small and they scurried away before he could take a good look at them. Drake estimated that the biggest of the leggy red animals that they had observed by the canal was maybe a quarter of his size. He was the planet’s giant.

  He stepped down from the lander. A faint breeze on his face carried a scent that made him wrinkle his nose. It reminded him of pickled onions, and that in turn suggested concert recitals in Germany, followed by dark beer and laughter and late-night suppers. How long since anything had summoned up those memories?

  He moved onto the road and knelt down to examine the surface.

  “Are you getting all this?” Whatever he registered with his senses or his instruments should be automatically sent to the ship, hovering in stationary orbit.

  “Everything. Continue.”

  “Just testing.”

  Drake probed the surface. The road was a fine glasslike gravel set in a tough bituminous matrix. It was tough and durable, but fine threads of bright red vegetation had taken a toehold at the edge. A narrow strip along the middle of the road was brighter than the rest, as though something continuously scoured it clean.

  “This hasn’t been used as a road for a long time. I think you may have it exactly right. They’ve advanced to pure electronic form and left material things behind. They didn’t restore the fallen tower, because they no longer need it.” Drake glanced at the sun. It was lower in the sky, and barred clouds were moving in across it. “If there’s any sign of them, it ought to be in the towns.”

  “Two hours to sunset.” The ship had noticed and interpreted his action. “The town that you are about to enter did not

  show up on our orbital survey as one with nighttime lighting. There are rainclouds approaching from the west. I may lose the ability to monitor your environment visually. If you intend a detailed exploration, you should stay in the lander and wait for morning. ”

  “It’s only a few minutes’ walk. I’ll take a quick look, and then come back to the lander for the night.”

  The two towers in the middle of the town were no more than a small fraction of the height of their counterparts by the canal, but as the sun went down they cast long shadows in Drake’s direction. They were taller than he had thought, a hundred meters and more. The bigger one was in the exact center of the town. Drake walked toward it across a skeletal pattern of girder shadows on the dark road.

  “I’m at the first building. Plants are growing around the walls, but they don’t stop there. I can see vines entering through that break.”

  He pointed to a gap in the building wall. The semicircular arch was six feet tall and came down to within a foot or so of ground level. It ended in a flat ledge about four feet wide. He could easily enter if he were willing to step on the vines.

  “What are the chances that touching the plants will hurt me?”

  “Possible, but unlikely unless they are motion sensitive. They are chemically different enough that they will not respond to you as a living form. Warning: Within the next ten minutes there will be enough cloud cover to inhibit my visual oversight of you.”

  Drake poked his head through the opening. It took
a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He was looking into a small room, with another semicircular aperture at the far side. Dusky pink plant life covered everything like a carpet. Beyond the other opening he could see a downward ramp and, beside it, the faint outline of what looked like a piece of gray machinery.

  He lifted his feet to avoid touching the plants and steadied himself with his hand on the side of the opening. A surface layer of wall material, about a quarter of an inch thick, crumbled to white powder at his touch. The dust made him sneeze. The wall behind was revealed as a solid metallic plate.

  At the same moment his communications unit produced a staccato rattle. A diminished ship’s voice said urgently but faintly, “Your signal is weakening. ”

  Drake pulled back. “Is it active interference?”

  “I think not. It is a natural fading. There must be some shield or insulation in the building walls and roof. I am predicting rain where you are located within the next quarter of an hour.”

  Drake looked again along the road that led to the tower. Nothing moved. Even the faint breeze, with its odd smell, had died away to nothing. The setting sun was hidden behind a cloud bank.

  “I’m going to take a quick look inside. Do you know what the roof is like?”

  “It is no longer visible because of the clouds, but our earlier survey showed two large round openings. Nothing could be seen within them. If the room that you looked into is of typical height, the building has three floors above ground level. ”

  “The ramp that I saw goes down, not up. I’ll see if there’s any way to reach the upper floors.”

  Drake moved forward and stepped high across the ledge. He could not avoid treading on the plants at the other side. They gave beneath his weight, with a squeaking sound of crushed rubbery tendrils.

  “Are we still in contact?”

  The communications unit remained silent. Drake hurried across the room and into the next one. It contained gray machinery, solid, alien, and uninformative. He saw a tubby upright cylinder about three feet high that could have been anything from a spacewarp to a dishwasher. He ran his hand across the upper surface. His fingers came away covered with grime. Everything was coated with a thick, uniform layer of dust.