Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by Charles Sheffield

  The ramp was steep by human standards, tilted at thirty degrees. He moved carefully downward, pushing his way through sheets of sticky material, thin as gossamer, that broke easily under his hands. Suddenly it was much darker. There was no opening to the outside at this level, and the sunlight that bled in from above was less and less. In another five minutes he would have to turn back. He wished that he had brought a light from the pinnace. Any

  exploration of lower levels would have to wait until morning.

  He had reached the bottom of the ramp. His shoe hit something that rolled away in front of him. He moved toward it and bent low to see what he had kicked.

  After one look he froze in his stooped position. He could not see colors in the gloom, but his foot had struck an object of a familiar size and shape. It was like one of the pink snails that crawled around the fence by the canal. This one was dead.

  Drake picked it up. It was surprisingly light. The outer surface was smooth and rubbery, which allowed it to retain its original cylindrical shape, but the insides had been scooped out through a long slit at one end. He wondered for a moment if it were some kind of mummified form. His nose told him differently. It had been dead just long enough for the corpse to become putrid.

  He could see half a dozen other remains on the floor ahead. One of them was bigger than the rest, a giant white version of the red multilegged creature that he had observed in the canal enclosure. Stretched upright, this one would loom over him. But it would never stretch over anything. It had been cut almost in two at its midsection.

  He retreated, heading up the ramp a lot faster than he had descended. Sticky cobwebs clung to him, and he held up his arm to shield his eyes. He did not feel at ease until he had retraced his path, scrambled over the ledge, and was standing in gloomy twilight.

  “Do we have contact?”

  “I am receiving your signal clearly. I do not have visual monitoring.”

  The ship’s voice was infinitely reassuring. Drake looked up into a heavy overcast, shielding his eyes against a rain that was gradually becoming stronger.

  “I’m done for the day. I’m heading for the pinnace. I don’t think we’ll find any manufacturing capability here, but I want to take another look inside the buildings tomorrow.”

  As Drake spoke he was moving rapidly along the road, head ducked to keep cold drops of rain out of his eyes. He lifted his head for a moment to peer through the downpour and halted abruptly. The lander should have been by the side of the road, fifty or sixty meters from the buildings. The field ahead stretched far away. It was empty.

  Had he turned himself around and headed out of town in a different direction?

  That was impossible. He had left the building by the same opening and moved directly away from the tall central tower. He could see a flattened place in the field where the lander had been.

  “Did you do something with the pinnace?”

  “Certainly not. Has it been interfered with?”

  “Worse than that — it’s gone.”

  He hurried forward. Soon he was close enough to see other marks in the soaked vegetation. There was a distinct trail running off toward the town. The lander was equipped with a hover and forward motion capability, but that had not been used. Something had dragged it along the ground.

  “I can see where it went. I’m going to follow.”

  Not just dragged, but hauled without caring whether or not the lander was damaged. As Drake followed the broad furrow, he came across a strip of metal and a torn-off bar from one of the lander’s ground legs. He picked the bar up and held it close to his face. In addition to muddy streaks, it bore smudges as though something had picked it up, held it, and discarded it.

  The trail led not to the nearest building, but to a bigger one on the left. The wall had a great black emblem marked in its middle. As Drake went closer he realized that the dark area was a gap in the wall itself. The furrow he was following led toward it, then faded to nothing as the surface changed from soft soil to hard impermeable material.

  “I think the lander has been taken inside a building.”

  “What are you proposing to do?”

  “I don’t have a choice. I have to recover the lander. Without it, there’s no way to get back to orbit.”

  “You could wait until morning. ”

  “I daren’t. It may have been accidental, but there has been damage.”

  As Drake spoke he was moving toward the building. He went carefully and quietly, the bar from the pinnace’s landing gear held close to his chest. Everything was silent except for the slowing patter of raindrops.

  At the wall he halted. The opening was big enough to take the whole lander. Was it just inside, where he might fly it right out again? Or had it been dragged down a ramp to some deeper level?

  He took two cautious steps inside. Immediately he felt a violent blow on his ribs, just below the left nipple. He swung the bar without thinking. It crunched into something that screamed, so loudly and at so high a pitch that it hurt his ears. He felt a blow on his left hip, then another on his right arm. Two invisible objects brushed past him. He turned and followed. He was in time to see two tall white shapes vanishing into the twilight.

  The rain had slowed to a few random drops. A ghostly flicker of light showed, far off across the field. Then another.

  A creaking sound came from behind him. He quickly spun around to face it.

  No tall white shape was leaping out of the dark doorway to attack him, but suddenly there was another flicker of light from inside the building. It provided enough illumination for him to see the lander. It had been hauled into the middle of the room and tilted onto its side. Unless it could be righted, it would not fly. ?

  “Are you hurt?” The ship could not see him, but it was receiving a record of his rapid movements.

  “I’m all right. But the lander is damaged.”

  “Can it be fixed?”

  “I don’t know.” Again there was light inside the building, this time a ruddy glare that varied in brightness like a sputtering flame. “I have to go in again.”

  The ship said something in reply, but he did not hear it. His attention was focused on the wall beyond the opening. It reflected light from sources farther inside. Torches burned there, orange red and erratic.

  Drake moved forward, the rough-edged metal bar over his shoulder. He thought he was ready, but the speed and violence of the attack surprised him.

  Half a dozen of them came out of the darkness like white ghosts. They had crouched waiting at the side of the room. Sharp pincers sank into his left arm. His reflexive jerk backward at the sudden pain saved him. The crude machete that slashed at his middle cut through his clothing but made only a long and shallow skin wound.

  He turned and smashed at the pincered head. It shattered and splashed cold liquid over his face and neck. He continued his turn, flailing away at anything within reach. The ghost with the machete whistled and screeched as the metal bar caught it solidly in the middle. It fell away, taking another with it. Then Drake was running for the opening. The torchlight behind him was brighter.

  He ran thirty yards from the building before he turned to look behind. Everything was quiet. No white shapes sprang through the hole in the wall. No orange torches flared from inside. For the moment he was safe.

  “Are you receiving me clearly?”

  “Perfectly clearly. I project clearing skies and visual oversight in another two hours.”

  “That will be too long. Listen carefully and place this into the permanent record.” The admonition was unnecessary, but Drake had to be sure. “Your suggestion that this planet has gone beyond the postindustrial phase was correct, but the principal intelligence has not moved to a more advanced form. It has regressed to primitivism. We did not observe the dominant intelligence earlier, because it is nocturnal and spends the days underground in these buildings. Based on what I have seen, there is no chance that this planet will provide the space-borne technology that we need
. Many of the old systems are still running, but I’d guess that the present inhabitants have little idea how they work. It’s just as likely that they worship them now.

  “Here are your instructions. Continue the search for a space-faring civilization throughout this galaxy. If you are

  successful, resurrect a copy of me and enlist the aid of whatever beings you find. If you search this whole galaxy and find nothing useful, do not continue to the next nearest one. The quest for our home galaxy without a signal to guide us could take to the end of time. Instead, begin a survey of this galaxy with a different objective. Look for a stellar system where raw materials are available in easily accessible form. You know what is needed for the creation of an S-wave signal detector. When you reach the right stellar system, resurrect copies of me, as many as will be needed to perform the space construction work. Build the signal detector, and use it. Do you understand these instructions?”

  “I understand their meaning, but not your reason for giving them. What of you ? Do you not propose to seek the lander and return to orbit?”

  “I wish I could do that.”

  “Then why do you give me instructions that omit discussion of your own future actions’?”

  “Because I don’t think my actions here are going to have much bearing on what you must do.” Drake could see the flicker of torches within the building. “I think the Morlocks are getting ready to try again.”

  “I do not understand the term ‘Morlocks.’ ”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t expect you to.” The torches inside the building were brighter. Drake backed up a few steps. He could smell his own blood, a strong and characteristic scent that he had known only once before in his life. He rubbed at his wounded left arm, then at the cut on his right side. It was strange how little he felt the pain. How would they attack, singly or in groups? Would he be better off in the open, or with his back against one of the walls?

  “I suggest that you proceed with patience. It is not necessary for you to return to orbit in the immediate future. The local food substances are not suitable for you, but I can transmit information for their processing that will allow you to consume them. The life expectancy of your body is many centuries. In that time the situation on the surface may change.”

  “It will change all right.” Drake turned, wondering if he might find a hiding place along the road or out in the fields. He saw lights, far off but steadily nearing. He would do better to head for the nearest building and make his stand there.

  “In any case.” The ship spoke while he was sprinting across sodden vines. “I cannot desert you. I must stay here as long as you survive. That may be centuries.”

  “It may. It would be nice to think that it will be.” Drake was panting, his back to the building wall. He clutched his metal bar, all that he had to hold on to. The torches were nearing, crowding in to make a dense ring through which he saw no way to break. “Stay until I die, then go.”

  They were closer. Long bodies gleamed pale orange in the smoky light of torches held in spidery forelimbs. He could see the razor-sharp pincers. They gaped wide enough to grasp his head. He lifted the metal bar, weighing it in his hands.

  “Wish me luck.” He took a deep breath through his mouth. “It won’t be long now.”

  Interlude: Dutchman

  The monitor ships had been designed by Cass Leemu and Mel Bradley with great care and ingenuity. They must be able to survive without external services or maintenance for up to a million years in orbit, all the while performing continuous observation and analysis. They must be entirely self-sufficient, able to take energy as necessary from any source. They must contain enough stored information to answer any question that a copy of Drake Merlin, embodied on the surface of a planet and awaiting the arrival of the Shiva, might ask.

  The composites represented by Cass and Mel had been careful and ingenious in their work, but not wasteful. They did not include features that could not under any reasonable scenario be needed.

  So no plan had been made for a ship to survive passage through a caesura. No ship had been designed to operate in galaxies far from human control and influence. No capability had been included for the on-board production of self-replicating machines. The design guaranteed that a ship be able to operate for millions of years, but not for

  unspecified billions.

  Cass and Mel, at Drake’s insistence, had gone beyond reasonable and foreseeable needs in just one area. The first humans, long ago, had emerged from the caves of Pleistocene Earth with brains already large enough to write sonnets, invent and play chess, compose fugues, and solve partial differential equations. They had not really needed such abilities in a world where hunting, gathering food, breeding, and nurturing seemed the only fixed constants. But a bigger-than-necessary brain had proved an advantage. It might be necessary again. Drake wanted each ship to be created not only self-aware, but intelligent enough to review the probable consequences of its instructions and of its own actions.

  This ship had received unusual and specific instructions: Seek a civilization that was already space-faring. Then rouse Drake from dormancy to interact with whatever — if anything — was found. Should no space-faring intelligence be located, within this galaxy, build a superluminal signal detector. Drake would have to be roused from dormancy and embodied to help with that, because the ship lacked the general-purpose robots needed for large space construction.

  The instructions implied several other imperatives. First, the ship must survive. It must do whatever was needed to ensure its continued operation. It must also be patient.

  The ship wandered alone across the sea of stars. There was no way that it could ever land on a body bigger than a small asteroid. Its own weight would destroy its fragile structure. A copy of Drake Merlin, far more robust, could be downloaded into an organic body while the ship was in orbit around a planet and landed there, but it was impossible for a large S-wave detector to be constructed on a planetary surface.

  Remaining in operating condition would not be difficult for the ship itself. Material resources for self-renewal were plentiful around many stars and in the dust clouds scattered through the spiral arms.

  In any case, that was not going to be the problem.

  The ship found an open lane of the galaxy and drifted along it, far from the disturbing effects of suns and singularities and dust clouds. It performed its careful analysis: eighty-eight billion stars in this galaxy; a mere two hundred targets as sources of potential intelligence — -five-eighths of them already eliminated by direct inspection. It would be a straightforward if lengthy task to look at the rest. The ship could certainly handle that.

  But now, assume that the search was unsuccessful, that no space-going intelligent life was found, that it was necessary to take the next step. Then the time scale for action expanded enormously. Years increased from millions to billions. To build an S-wave detector — one large enough to see into the deepest reaches of space — was a monstrous task. Drake Merlin, in his final orders from the clouded surface of the planet, could not have known what he was demanding.

  But the ship knew.

  It also knew that it had no choice. Unlike a human, a ship’s brain could not elect the annihilation of self.

  As the ship computed the trajectory for the next target star, it mapped out the mandated sequence of its future actions if the current search failed to produce the right kind of intelligent life.

  Find the right type of dust cloud, one close enough to a recent supernova to be rich in the necessary heavy elements. Embody Drake Merlin — not once, but in a hundred or a thousand or a million copies. (And never consider their eventual fate.) Use the Merlins, singly and working in unison, as laborers. In the absence of intelligent robots, Merlins must mine the dust cloud, build the space production facility, shape the strands of the antennas and stretch them across space in the precise configuration demanded for signal detection of S-wave sources.

  It could be done. The ship saw practi
cal obstacles — it must husband its limited drive, coasting without power for thousands of years between target stars, taking advantage of every natural force field and particle wind of the galaxy; but there was nothing impossible.

  Except, perhaps, for the time that all this would take.

  The ship made the calculation and regarded the result. It could not sigh or wince, but it wished that it was possible to go back to Drake Merlin in the last moments before the horde of white ghosts had swarmed over him, and ask if this was what he really wanted.

  It knew the answer to that question. The on-board information base made it clear: Drake Merlin did not want any of

  this. He wanted his lost wife. The odds against that made everything in the ship’s calculations seem like certainty by comparison.

  The next target star was known, the most economical flight path computed and ready. There was no further reason for delay.

  The ship set out on its multibillion-year journey, sailing the endless trade winds of an indifferent galaxy.

  Chapter 28

  “From far, from eve and morning

  And yon twelve-winded sky”

  Who would ever have thought that it could take so long?

  Drake drifted through space, his suited body slowly turning. He had left the ship in order to inspect the overall condition of the structure. How many times had he been downloaded to do this, he or some other of the multiple copies of himself? How many times had everything been found to be in working order, and how many times had he returned to electronic storage?

  A thousand, ten thousand, a million. It made no difference. The S-wave detector was all around, a construct whose nodes and gossamer filaments stretched away past the point where his eyes could trace their presence against the stars. The great array was supposed to be able to detect evidence of superluminal message activity out to the red shift limit. It had been set up to operate automatically and indefinitely, if necessary without human or ship supervision. One by one, galaxies would be looked at until the whole universe had been surveyed. The process would stop only when a signal was detected. So far the instrument had reported nothing but a steady hiss of background noise.