Heirs of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Whatever you’re trying to talk me into, Frank, you’re doing a shit-poor job of it. And you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, either.”

  “If you already know it, then why bother with the big meeting? Why waste time debating over options as if you really have any choice in the matter?”

  The scorn in his voice stung, like salt in an open wound.

  “Because the decision can’t be mine alone to make.”

  “But it can’t be left to them. Christ, they’re idiots, Caryl! Half of them seriously believe that, regardless of what happens, the human spirit will prevail and overcome any adversity. But you and I both know that the Starfish will storm through this region and completely remove all trace of humanity as it goes—and they won’t even stop to check their heels to see what it is they’ve stepped in, either.”

  A great weariness fell over her. The fatalistic certainty of her insignificance was something that confronted her on an almost hourly basis.

  “So what do you suggest we do, Frank? What’s your great plan to save humanity?”

  “We make them notice us, of course.”

  “We’ve tried that, remember? It didn’t work.”

  “Then you didn’t try hard enough.”

  “Easy to say, but do you actually have something more than just hot air and criticism to offer here?”

  “I do have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  “Try me anyway.”

  “Very well,” he said. “You’ve already tried broadcasting messages to the Starfish. You’ve left satellites in vulnerable systems, radiating in all frequencies, using all known codes and media. You’ve sacrificed hole ships to transmit via ftl. And despite attempting to get their attention, you’ve never once received a reply.

  “I think the reason for this is that you’ve been hailing the wrong people. The cutters are nothing more than drones; they’re just doing a job. They’re deaf to anything but their orders, and those orders are to take out any sign of intelligence in the systems they’ve been allocated. Maybe I’m anthropomorphizing, but that’s what I see when I study their behavior. They’re simply front-line soldiers, grunts, cannon fodder—they’re nothing, Caryl.

  “We need to speak to the people giving the orders, and I don’t think we’ve even come remotely close to seeing them yet.”

  “What about the Trident?”

  “It’s possible, but at this stage there’s no way of knowing one way or the other. All I do know is this: they probably have no idea that we even exist and no reason to suspect it. They’re as blind to us as we are to the insects in the soil over which we used to walk. They’re not looking for us, so they don’t see us.”

  “So what’s your plan, then?” She wished he would hurry up and get to the point.

  “To be honest, it’s not my plan,” he said. “I was contacted by someone with an intriguing idea.”

  She wanted to ask who this person was, but she didn’t have time—the engram assembly was quickly breaking down into a morass of arguments and personal insults, and she needed to get back to it—so instead she asked: “And that is?”

  “It’s quite simple, actually,” he said. “If the Starfish won’t come to us, then we’ll just have to go to them.”

  1.1.3

  In the virtual spaces of the hole ship walls; the image of Lucia Benck faced Peter Alander for the first time in 110 Adjusted Planck years. She looked exactly the same as she had during entrainment, but he had changed both overtly and subtly, from the hair to the color of his skin; from his apparent age—much younger than it had been on Earth, even taking antisenescence treatments into account—to the way he moved. There was something about him, Lucia decided, that was very different from the Peter Alander she’d known.

  But it was Peter nonetheless, and that was all that mattered. She saw him through the hole ship’s advanced senses, gazing at him from a thousand different angles simultaneously and in all frequencies. He was a glowing, cubist, abstract of a person, dissected and reassembled every nanosecond as her new senses swept through him. His biological functions were laid bare before her, even those specific to his android body—and others that had no analogue in human anatomy. What they were, she didn’t know.

  His Adam’s apple worked. Complex glandular responses indicated anxiety that her image subconsciously imitated. He stared at her for a few seconds longer in troubled silence, finally shaking his head slowly and saying, “How did you...?”

  “Thor found me. She rescued me from Chung-5 and uploaded me into her hole ship. I’ve been there ever since.”

  “You were in the...?” He was having trouble finishing his questions. “I don’t think anyone’s tried that before.”

  She smiled. “I’m the first, actually.”

  He nodded in understanding. “You always were the explorer.”

  She didn’t need to examine the tightness around his eyes to know that something other than amusement lay behind the comment. “I’m sorry I had to go, Peter. It’s just that—” She struggled to recapture her rationalizations, the feelings attendant to her decision. They felt incredibly remote, and not just because they’d occurred many years earlier, even in subjective time. “Somewhere—back home, our originals—we were together, so what did it matter what I did? I was just one of dozens, hundreds, you know?”

  “You all made the same decision,” he said.

  She nodded solemnly. “Thor told me. I’m sorry.”

  “I know you didn’t do this to hurt me. You had to do what was right for you.” He fell silent once more, shrugging awkwardly before moving the conversation onto a different subject. “You wouldn’t have known what happened back on Earth, either—with the Spike and everything.”

  Another nod. “Only Caryl Hatzis survived. Which is kind of—” She tried to find the right word. “—scary.”

  He laughed at this. “I’m sure Caryl would love to hear it put that way. And I sympathize, but she’s the only true human remaining. She’s all we have left. She may be biomodified up to the eyeballs, and she may be a hundred and fifty years old, but she’s the reason a lot of the engrams keep waking up in the morning. If humanity consisted of nothing but a bunch of dodgy programs already pushing their expiry dates, there wouldn’t be any point. She’s real; it makes a difference.”

  Peter shifted from foot to foot as he spoke, as though restless or nervous. His body was all smooth angles and planes, elegantly muscular yet not quite right. There was something about him that wasn’t entirely human. Her image—generated by her engram but not entirely under her conscious control—folded her arms across her chest and stepped minutely away.

  “You look pretty real to me,” Lucia said.

  Peter looked down at himself, realizing for the first time he was naked. He snatched a sheet from the bed and wrapped it around himself. She smiled at his uncharacteristic self- consciousness but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m a freak,” he said with galling matter-of-factness. “No one would fight for me. I’m the engram with the highest failure rate in the entire program. I’m a copy of that arrogant bastard who thought the galaxy revolved around him but now can’t even keep his head on right. I’ve been taken apart and put back together so many times I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “That’s my point, Peter. You’re someone.” Every instinct in her virtual body told her that. “If you’re not the past, then maybe you’re the future instead.”

  He exhaled explosively—something caught between a laugh and a bleat of incredulity. “No wonder the Spinners picked me to talk through, then. They obviously have a sense of humor.”

  For a long moment, she didn’t know what to say. His readings were incomprehensible. His internal organs displayed a strange symmetry that she’d never seen before, and his brain seemed to have grown entirely new sections. There was a mysterious membrane covering his entire body. It appeared to be a film of water, shifting constantly but never evaporating.

&nb
sp; “What’s happened to you, Peter? You used to be so strong, so certain of yourself. Where did it all go?”

  “In there, actually,” he said, pointing at a clunky-looking solid-state data storage unit of UNESSPRO manufacture tucked into one corner of the cabin.

  She frowned quizzically at him. “What do you mean?”

  “You asked where the old me went,” he said. “That’s where Caryl puts the copies of me that don’t work. She’s been collecting them ever since Sothis was destroyed. She calls it the Graveyard.”

  Lucia grimaced in distaste; Peter smiled.

  “That’s what I thought, too,” he said.

  “But why is she doing it?”

  “I have no idea. But I’m not sure that I mind it. It acts as a reminder of what I’ve lost—of who I’m not anymore.”

  “Shouldn’t that be whom?” Out loud it sounded ridiculously irrelevant, but strangely, it was all she could think to say. The conversation wasn’t going at all as she’d imagined it.

  He laughed at that. “I’ve never really known, to tell you the truth. And neither have you, if my memory serves me correctly—and I’m sure it does. It’s programmed into us, after all.”

  “Thor mentioned something about the programming. I’m lucky to be here, apparently. If all of the other versions of me are in as bad a shape as I was, there might not be too many operable copies of Lucia Benck out there.”

  “How long had you been traveling?”

  “A long time,” she said, injecting as much solemnity into her tone as was necessary to convey her regrets. “I went through pi-1 Ursa Major, the Linde’s target system, over forty years ago. My clock rate has been slow since then, but the years kept mounting.” Those memories, too, seemed faint, as though they’d happened to another person. “And to think I actually had hopes of seeing another galaxy! I thought that if I kept going, there would be no stopping me. How naive I was.” A glimmer of her old self found metaphorical oxygen and caught flame. “But now...”

  Peter frowned. “But now what?”

  “Thor told me all about the other aliens—the Yuhl. They travel endlessly, she said, jumping from system to system in the Starfish wake. Apparently they invited us to join them, too.”

  From his expression she could tell that he didn’t share her excitement at the prospect.

  “Well, don’t you see, Peter? It means that I get to see the galaxy as I’ve always wanted, and I get to be with you at the same time! What more could I ask for?”

  Thoroughly reinforced pathways in her mind glowed with the energy she poured into that thought. Her original’s longstanding dilemma—to explore the stars or to opt for a life with Peter, perpetuated across all her copies—had found a solution, finally, and every fiber of her being resonated to it She might only be an engram, and a time-weary one at that, but she had succeeded where her original had failed. She could have her cake and eat it.

  “It’s not that simple, Lucia,” he said cautiously.

  She refused to have her mood dampened. “Why not? Think of the things we could learn from the Yuhl. The things we can see!”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking weary. He seemed to be having trouble working out what to say. “There may be alternatives.”

  “Such as?”

  “That’s what Caryl’s trying to work out now. Everyone’s gathered here to discuss—”

  “I know, Peter. Thor and I just missed you at iota Boötis. They said to come here, where the decision was being made. But what other decision can we make? It’s not as if any of the alternatives are terribly attractive.” Impatience was beginning to make inroads into her optimism.

  He hesitated again, keeping his gaze deliberately away from her.

  “What’s going on, Peter? What is it you’re not telling me?”

  He sighed, raising his stare to meet hers. “There’s a lot we need to discuss, Lucia. You’ve only been here a few minutes and—”

  “I’m looking forward to traveling with you, Peter,” she said, cutting across his cautious rambling with a knife-edge certainty.

  He looked far from reassured, though. In fact, if anything, he was looking more worried than ever.

  “Tell me, Lucia: How did you get in here?” he said slowly.

  “I told you. Thor found me—”

  “No, I mean here, in this hole ship. Has Pearl linked up with it, or have you uploaded yourself with the message Thor transmitted?”

  “I uploaded myself,” she said, thinking: Why is he asking this? How is it relevant? “I can move freely among all the hole ships except where security restrictions have been put in place. The ships let me wander, it’s only the people who get in the way.”

  “Does Thor know you’re here?”

  “Does she need to know? I’m a free agent; I can do whatever I want.”

  “Klotho, shut down all internal communication with Rasmussen.” he said. “Accept only incoming transmissions as legitimate, and do not reply to anything without my express permission.”

  It didn’t register that he was talking to the hole ship until Lucia sensed the boundaries of her world contract around her.

  She felt as though her head was being gripped by a vice, except she didn’t have a head, and the only thing enclosing her was the hole ship’s semantic space.

  “What are you doing, Peter?”

  “Thor has been irresponsible letting you wander freely like this,” he said. “You’re fixating; it’s a symptom of senescence.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re not thinking properly.” He sighed. “Listen, Lucia, I’m not the same Peter Alander you remember from the Linde. Nor am I the same as the one on Earth, either. I’m—” He hesitated uncertainly, then said: “I’m someone else altogether.”

  Why was he speaking to her like she was an idiot? “I know that, Peter!”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t, Lucia. I’ve seen your manner before, in other engrams. You’re seeing me as your memory sees me, not as I am.”

  She was about to protest the accusation, but he must have seen it coming and jumped in before she could say anything.

  “You’re probably not aware that you’re doing it—no more than you could be aware of what your programming is doing to you. And I know what it’s like, Lucia. Believe me, I’ve been there. It’s like being caught in a loop, but all you’re seeing is a straight line. You can only see the discontinuities from the outside.”

  “So what are you saying? That you don’t trust me?”

  He tightened the sheet around him. “It just strikes me as dangerous for you to be free to go anywhere you choose when you’re not yourself, that’s all. It’s nothing personal.”

  “What do you think I am, Peter?”

  “I don’t know—and that’s the problem. I mean, suppose you don’t like something I have to tell you; how do I know that you’re not going to shut off my air? Or steal another hole ship and hurt someone else? I don’t even know if you can control the ships like that, but I’m reluctant to take the chance. I don’t even know who I am, half the time.” He stared, warily, at her image in the walls, which she only noticed then was flickering and distorting as though under great electromagnetic pressure. “Lucia, before we continue with this conversation, I really think you should be examined.”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted, ignoring the stretching and strobing of her image. “Trust me.”

  He completely ignored her reassurances. “Klotho, can you confirm that I am in command of your systems?”

  “That is correct, Peter,” said the hole ship.

  “And what status have you given the personality of Lucia Benck?”

  “While you are both passengers in this vessel, she will have the same status as yourself.”

  “Can you lock her out of the command loop?” he asked. “I don’t want her interfering with my orders or issuing any without my knowledge.”

  “Peter...” She could manage nothing else in the face of his mistrust.

 
“I’ve seen too many engrams go bad, Lucia—my own included. Until Caryl has had a chance to examine you, I can’t take any chances. I’m sorry.”

  A wave of ugliness swept through her. She hated it, but at the same time she couldn’t fight it. There was no way she would allow him to make her a prisoner in her own home. The semantic spaces of the hole ship AIs were identical from ship to ship. In the days since her awakening, they had come to seem more real to her than the solid matter they oversaw.

  She felt the command pathways of Klotho’s AI stretching out around her. She was a dust mote wandering the transistors of a giant, antique computer, incapable as yet of seeing the whole picture but knowing how information flowed and ebbed through the greater machine. Already she could feel where to intrude if she wanted Klotho to take orders from her instead of Peter.

  It was true what he said, too: she could have the ship cut off his air, if she wanted to. But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

  Ignore his command, Klotho, she instructed. You will listen to me instead.

  You are both passengers, the hole ship replied. I am obliged to obey you both where possible, and to follow my own judgment when orders conflict.

  Don’t lock me in here! she pleaded, exerting all her will on the pressure points she sensed. All the years of confinement in Chung-5 were fresh in her mind. She’d thought she was free, that she could travel the stars as she had always dreamed. It was a cruel joke to have that snatched away from her now—and by Peter of all people. She’d thought he understood.

  “Lucia?” Peter was looking nervously around him. The fact that her image had disappeared completely, leaving the walls of his cubicle depthless and empty, had obviously unnerved him. “Lucia, are you still listening to me?”

  She withdrew from Klotho’s complex circuitry, returning her attention to Peter. “Why should I?”

  “Because I want you to understand. When I was on Adrasteia, I was desperate for you to return. In fact, at times it was only the thought of you that kept me going. You were the anchor on which I hung my sanity. But you never showed up; you never called.”