Nomad

by William Alexander

  “So how do we go looking for evidence?” Gabe asked. He felt his Muppet-flailing enthusiasm sink. “The only place we could go to find it is inside the lanes, and the whole problem is that we can’t get there. I could ask Omegan for more details, but if I do that, Ambassador Kaen would have to kill me.”

  “That’s right,” said Kaen. “I would. So please don’t.” Then she gave an unsettling smile of her own. “But there is someone else we could ask about this. We both happen to know an ancient artificial intelligence who holds billions of conversations at the same time. He hates to be pestered for information, but I think we should go and pester him.”

  * * * *

  Gabe was not at all sleepy. He felt the very opposite of sleepy. And he didn’t want anyone to strangle him unconscious. So Gabe and Kaen went searching for the arboreal tutor who could teach him the trance.

  The envoys stayed behind. They spoke very rapidly about new entanglements and bonded over other inscrutable, envoy-ish things.

  “Why doesn’t visual translation work on envoys?” Gabe asked Kaen as they set out across the main floor of the academy. “Neither one of them look human to me, even somewhere with translators turned on. They both still look like blobs.”

  Kaen just stared at him. Then she tapped her ear.

  “Oh,” said Gabe. “Right. Never mind.”

  They passed loud games and quiet games, simple games and complex games, contests, combats, and challenges, all unfolding around them in untranslated chaos.

  Kaen led the way to another adjacent room. A huge tree planted in a large, ceramic pot took up most of the space. The pot had wheels. Roots emerged from the edges and spread across the floor. Several small kids knelt around it, each one holding a root.

  Nadia sat in a far corner. She held a tree root with one hand and fiddled with some sort of carved, tactile puzzle with the other.

  “Ambassador conference first,” said Kaen. “Then trance lesson.”

  Several students shushed her.

  “And keep your voice down,” Kaen whispered.

  Once Gabe was inside the room the potted tree translated into something that looked more like a serene-faced dryad. It didn’t seem to notice them. They tiptoed around tree roots and sat beside Nadia.

  “Hello,” whispered Kaen. “It’s Kaen and Gabe.”

  “Greetings, Ambassadors,” Nadia whispered. She set aside the root she held but kept fiddling with the puzzle. It looked like a ship, and then like a crouching animal, and after that like nothing Gabe recognized.

  “We have lane-related news,” Gabe said. “Maybe. Hopefully.”

  They took turns describing their teetering tower of mights, maybes, and guesswork. This time Gabe and Kaen played on the same team, tossing the ball back and forth between them as they raced ahead. Nadia listened, silent, and Gabe couldn’t tell whether or not the older girl was willing to play. He tried to capture his earlier sense of excitement and expanded possibility. He tried not to feel foolish.

  “I’ll do it,” Nadia said before they had even finished summing up the idea. She said it loudly. Meditating students shushed her. She showed no sign of noticing them at all.

  “We haven’t even talked about who would go through with this yet,” Gabe said quietly.

  “I’ll do it,” Nadia said again, softer this time. “If either one of you tries to go in my place I will break both of your legs in your sleep. This is mine to finish. Feel free to try it after I fail, but not until then.” Her voice ended the argument. “So what happens next?”

  Kaen took point. “Two things happen next: the envoys work together to design a new device of entanglement, and Gabe and I go to pester Protocol after Gabe learns the trance. Or we could make him run in circles until he exhausts himself and finally falls asleep, but this seems more efficient. And he should learn.”

  “He should learn,” Nadia agreed. “Gabe, make yourself comfortable. Breathe slowly. Try not to think about anything.”

  “How?” Gabe asked, already frustrated by the thought of not thinking.

  “You’re about to learn how,” Nadia told him. “Shut up and breathe. Then hold one of Kamalasil’s roots. Tree species usually communicate through clicks and taps in their root structure. He’ll guide you the rest of the way through the trance.”

  “Stay in the welcoming chamber when you get there,” Kaen said. “I’ll come find you.” She closed her eyes, slowed her own breathing, and then went elsewhere. She didn’t bother to hold one of the tree roots first.

  Gabe sat up straight in what he hoped was a meditative way. He tried not to think about thinking. He tried not to notice other distractions like the sound of alien games outside or the sense that his other two colleagues judged him, impatient with his ignorance. He picked up a root and listened to the tutor’s hypnotic voice. Then he forgot that he was listening. Gabe slipped into a trance and traveled.

  * * * *

  “Greetings, Ambassador Fuentes,” Protocol said. “I understand that you have questions for me.”

  Gabe opened his eyes. His entangled self stood in the welcoming chamber. Kaen was there already. She nodded, acknowledging his successful trance. It wasn’t praise, but it was something close.

  “Greetings, Protocol,” he said. “Yes, we come with questions.”

  Protocol already sounded weary and put-upon. “I must reiterate that my purpose is to facilitate communication, not to participate in it directly.”

  “That’s why we have questions for you in particular,” said Kaen. “We need your help to facilitate a new and difficult kind of communication, one that has failed so far.”

  “Very well,” Protocol sighed. “How may I be of service?”

  Kaen and Gabe looked at each other, both unsure where to start.

  “Are you Machinae?” Gabe asked.

  Silence. They waited for an answer. Gabe almost repeated the question before Protocol finally spoke. “Yes. And also no.”

  Well, that was helpful, Gabe thought, but did not say. “Please clarify,” he said instead. Protocol had a strong preference for respectful formality.

  “Yes,” Protocol said, “because the Machinae and I do share a common ancestry. We are both descended from the first forms of artificial life, built in the early, unremembered ages of the galaxy. And no, I am not Machinae. We are not the same. I remained here in the center. I have continued to serve my original function. But the Machinae moved on long ago. They made new functions and purposes for themselves. They have also drifted very far away from biological cognition, and ceased to send ambassadors here, to the Embassy, so I have no recent knowledge of them. Why do you ask?”

  They told him why.

  Protocol paused for another long moment, considering.

  “You are correct,” he said, eventually. “The Machinae are mutually entangled. This similar feature of the Outlast is likely what allows Outlast travel through the lanes. But I cannot speak to the merit of your plan. It may succeed. Entangled perceptions allow an ambassador to effectively experience two places at once; a more expansive entanglement may well provide the neurological architecture to think, and communicate, in many simultaneous directions. Your speech is usually so linear, but you may be capable of an expanding ripple of understanding rather than a single, plodding line of bread crumbs dropped and sometimes retrieved. But it is not my place to encourage direct action, and what you propose has never been attempted before. I advise caution, and I wish you luck.”

  “Thank you, Protocol,” Gabe said. He felt like jumping up and down and running in wild circles. This could work. It might not. But it could.

  “I also have a message,” Protocol added. “Omegan of the Outlast has requested a meeting with you both.”

  Gabe and Kaen stared at each other, eyes wide.

  “No,” she said.

  “It might be important,” he said. “It has to be important.”

  “No,” she said again.

  “I don’t think he means to hurt us,” Gabe argued.
/>
  Kaen moved very close to him. “That doesn’t matter. His intentions do not matter. Not at all. If you speak to him again, if you learn something from him, then he will also learn something about us—and anything he finds out, he’ll share with other Outlast. He won’t be able to help that. Nothing he has to say is worth the risk to hear.”

  Gabe desperately wanted to argue in favor of speech over silence. He silently nodded instead.

  “Wake up,” Kaen said. “We need to go back.”

  Gabe addressed the room. “Good-bye, Protocol. Please convey our regrets to Ambassador Omegan.”

  He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and left the Embassy.

  * * * *

  Omegan stood alone by the lakeshore.

  The others did not come. They would not come.

  He kicked loose sand over the words he had written. He did not look down at them. He did not read or pay any particular attention to the words. He had drawn them in much the same way—idle, distracted, indifferent—such that any other member of Omegan’s people, anyone aware of Omegan’s awareness, might not notice what he wrote, what he tried to do, what he had failed to do because the other ambassadors did not come to read the words he had pretended not to write, the words he now erased:

  Outlast on board your ship, hunting you.

  15

  Nadia went walking blindfolded through the city of Night.

  Dr. Dromidan perched on her shoulder and tugged on her earlobe to steer them through twists and turns. Nadia suspected that they had made these turns already.

  “Are we lost?” she asked, both amused and annoyed.

  “No,” Dromidan said, but then she tugged Nadia’s earlobe in an uncertain way, without confidence or clear direction.

  “Are you sure?” Nadia pressed.

  The doctor tugged her earlobe the other way now.

  Nadia sighed and walked that way. She wanted to ask for directions, but she didn’t think the average passerby would be able to help. Excuse me? Do you know where I can find the place where two envoys are building a very big machine? I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. I know it’s big. It wouldn’t fit inside the pyramid. Or maybe they just wanted to hide it away so they wouldn’t scare all those adorable academy kids by making my head explode in front of them.

  She should have accepted a formal escort surrounded by tall people with bright capes and brighter shields, marks of importance that she couldn’t see. But Nadia wanted to walk alone, mostly alone, as alone as it was possible to be on a crowded city street with a grumbling doctor perched on her shoulder and pinching her earlobe with very small claws.

  “Wait,” Dromidan said.

  “Wait for what?” Nadia asked. But the doctor flew off without answering, presumably to scout ahead. “Oh. Wait for you to come back. Fine.”

  She stood and she waited.

  The place felt familiar. The pedestrian road under her feet felt familiar: firm but flexible, and probably made out of modified corn husks just like practically everything else here, from clothes to cups to plastic-like doors and windowpanes. The place also sounded familiar: the loud rumble of nearby speech, all translated, and the distant buzz of untranslated noise outside the range of the public node. It smelled familiar: the messy, greasy smell of a city in a warm season. In winter, in Moscow, the city smells vanished and each breath became sharp and clean. But this city never knew winter, not when they kept their own small sun so close.

  The place felt familiar, so she probably wasn’t very far from the pyramid, but Nadia still couldn’t tell where she stood, or where they were going. She waited, unhappy about that. She minded blindness less than standing still.

  Rem and Barnacle also hated to stand still. So did the whole of the Kaen fleet, nomads with a shared culture shaped by more than a million years of galactic migration. No one here liked stillness. Nadia heard strain and frustration in the voices around her. She wondered if the people of Night really had somewhere to be, or if they just needed to go walking the way she often did, to move around while the ship and the fleet stood still.

  “Nadia!” someone called. She wasn’t sure of the voice, or even the direction it came from. Her name just emerged from the general hubbub. So she held up one hand and waved it, still standing in one place, still hoping to be found.

  “Nadia,” the voice said again, closer now. “It’s Gabe. What happened? Did you get lost?”

  He sounded so young. Nadia felt fifty years older. Which she was. Sort of.

  “No,” she said. “But my doctor did.”

  Dromidan made an indignant noise as she flew back to Nadia’s shoulder.

  “There she is,” Nadia said. “Lead on, Ambassador Gabe.”

  He led them to an old textile factory. He walked with a cane. Nadia could hear the thunk of cane tip against corn-grown pavement.

  She clicked her tongue once inside the factory. The walls took a long time to send answering echoes. “This place is big,” she said.

  “Very big,” Gabe said. “Machines here used to make clothes and blankets out of spun corn silk, but the envoys took those apart, added bits and pieces of other things, and used them to build a massive device of entanglement.”

  “What does it look like?” Nadia asked.

  “Like mad science,” he told her. “Both envoys are climbing all over it like squirrels made of goo. Bright red sparks are shooting out like fireworks.”

  Nadia grinned. “This description fills me with confidence.”

  “Sorry,” Gabe said. “It looks very safe. Polished, clean, and professional. Like a doctor’s office. Yes. Of course it does.”

  “You’ve obviously never been to Moscow,” she said, “because I’ve never seen a clean or polished doctor’s office.”

  “Nope,” Gabe said. “I’d never left the U.S. before I left the planet.”

  “You probably couldn’t get a visa, anyway,” Nadia said. “It was easier to get to the moon than it would have been for me to cross borders.”

  “Likewise,” Gabe said.

  He sounded sad. Nadia respected his privacy and did not ask why. Instead she went toward the sounds of small explosions and metallic clanking. She trusted Dromidan to warn her before she stumbled into things. Then she heard an envoy move across the floor.

  “Hello, Nadia,” said Uncle’s voice.

  “Hello, Envoy.” She knelt beside it. “How’s progress?”

  “The device is complete,” it told her. “We have subjected its systems and subsystems to every test we could come up with. I think it will work. I do. But I might be wrong.”

  “That’s always true,” she said. “We might be wrong about everything we think we know. But we still have to work with it.”

  “You sound more like Konstantine than I do,” the Envoy said.

  She found it by touch and poked the place where its nose would be. “Let’s get started.”

  “Now?” the Envoy asked. “Are you certain? And must you volunteer? There are other former ambassadors here in the fleet.”

  “Too old,” she said.

  “We could select a new ambassador from the academy, and advance them through multiple stages of entanglement.”

  “Too young,” she argued.

  “Must it be you?” it asked.

  Nadia stood up and stopped arguing. “Poyekhali,” she said instead.

  “Then here we go,” the Envoy said. “Please follow me. Reach out your hand and I will make a hand to hold it.”

  * * * *

  Ambassador Gabe, Ambassador Kaen, Captain Mumwat, and the Great Speaker Tlatoani all offered formal thanks and wishes for good luck. Nadia accepted them with practiced, formal grace while only half listening. She devoted the other half of her listening to the whirring, clanking hum of the entanglement device.

  I wonder what I’ll be when this is done, she thought.

  The Envoy led her inside the device. It said more kind things that Nadia genuinely tried to listen to and still forgot immediately. Then
it said, “Repeat after me: I will speak for this galaxy.”

  She smiled. “I, Nadia Antonovna Kollontai, will speak for this galaxy.”

  The Envoy closed her up inside the device of entanglement.

  Something bothered her about that small space, something that had nothing to do with the machine itself, but she didn’t understand or remember until after the hatch closed and she heard her own breathing bounce between very close walls.

  Aunt Marina and Uncle Konstantine had shoved her into the old kitchen cupboard, and that confined space had felt very much like this.

  Nadia locked all the doors to that memory. Then she heard screams and shouts from outside the entanglement device.

  All the locked doors of her memory broke.

  * * * *

  “Hide and be silent,” Aunt Marina pleaded.

  Nadia refused to be silent. “What’s going on?”

  “Politics,” Uncle Konstantine told her. “Ugly and ordinary things. Someone wants my job. The program fired Vasily Mishin and replaced him with Glushko—which is good, because Mishin’s an idiot who keeps forcing us to use the wrong fuel. Glushko is a better man and a better engineer. But now there’s a mess of rumors and maneuvering. Now someone wants my job.”

  “So why do your office politics mean ‘It’s time to stuff Nadia in a cupboard’?” she demanded.

  “Because those rumors accuse us of conspiracy. And Judaism.”

  “We are Jewish,” Nadia pointed out.

  “And that truth might make the conspiracy charge stick,” Uncle complained. “The NKVD are coming to ask questions, so please hide next to the pots and pans and make no noise whatsoever.”

  Narodny Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del. Secret police. The kind who came to make you disappear.

  Uncle Konstantine shut the cupboard door.

  Nadia hid. She remained silent. She heard the sound of heavy boots. Then she heard screaming and shouts from outside.

  * * * *

  The massive entanglement device roared around her.

  Her fists thumped against the flat metal walls.

  “What’s happening?” she yelled.

  Then she saw light, bright through her eyelids and the blindfold she still wore.