Iris

by William Barton

  Technological items tend to mimic natural processes. An amoeba dies fast and so does a lawn mower, but then it's an interesting trip up the crooked ladder of evolution. . . . The four of them went through the dying spaceship as fast as they could, scanning the remote overhead for signs of a door, and nothing worked quite right anymore.

  Somewhere, far ahead, something exploded with a radio-bang and threw its liquid contents to the floor in a quick eruption of globules. They were multicolored and made a wonderful low-g splash, oscillating as they sailed through space, in-out and in again. The ambient light continued to dim on an arithmetic decline and their suit rectifiers had to work for them.

  The four climbed to a structural high point and stood scanning the sky. "There," said Sealock, pointing about half a kilometer away. "A traverse node. Let's hope the system is still functioning."

  "And what if it isn't?" said Methol.

  "Then we die in the dark," said Hu.

  Krzakwagrinned. "Imagine how that'll confuse the next people who manage to get in here." Sealock turned and stared at them. "There must," he said, "be some evolutionary advantage to being an asshole. Let's go." He turned and strode in the direction of the machine that somehow he knew was used to launch "people" to the door nodes on the far side when the central cavity was evacuated. It was very dark now, and he activated a microwave emitter and played it over the corridor in front of them. Finally they reached the place, which looked just like the dais upon which they had first landed. Holding his breath in suspense, he stepped onto the circular spot and jumped for the other side. Miraculously, it worked. Brendan found himself reversing the long ballistic arc between sides. Apparently Aello's gravity was being compensated for, and he landed, hands first, on the gently cradling game board opposite. The others followed, landing in their own peculiar ways. Looking"up" at the dying world below, Krzakwa said, "Good thing the field still works."

  "Let's get the fuck out of here, if we still can." Sealock stood on the node and cranked up his friction coefficient. The door irised open and he was accelerated through.

  They left.

  Back in Polaris, on the ventral surface of the now dead-seeming alien craft, not far from an airlock door which had failed to shut properly, they sat around suitless and had a meal, mostly in silence. Krzakwa, tidier than usual and perhaps more subdued, put aside his sandwich with a gusty sigh. He tugged softly on his beard and said, "All right, what have we seen? We might as well face this now."

  "Obviously," said Hu, "a landing craft."

  "We all saw the mother ship in the playback. Given the generally sealike nature of that scene, I think it's safe to say that this Artifact housed some sort of aquarium . . . maybe a whole ecology. And the purpose of it all was to cart this marine ecology down to the surface of a planet."

  "Do you believe all that?" asked Ariane.

  Brendan paused. "I—I don't know what I believe."

  "Could this larger ship be embedded in Ocypete ?" asked Krzakwa . "Or is this some sort of abandoned lifeboat, left behind by its mother?"

  Jana said, "Something that large would have shown up even in the low-res gravitational survey. This ship just happened to be overlooked because the large empty cavity perfectly camouflaged the mass of the shell."

  "Is there a chance that it's—" said Ariane.

  "I'm afraid you're on a wild goose chase," said Jana. "It's not here. Now that we've done a preliminary reconnaissance in the Artifact, I feel we should write up a quick resume and transmit it to the authorities. Then we should go back in."

  There was a moment of stunned silence.

  "What?" growled Krzakwa . "You want to go back in there?"

  "Sure," said Hu. "Why not?"

  "I don't know about you, Jana," said Methol, "but it's too dangerous in there for me. I'm afraid."

  "What are you going to do—just go back to Ocypete ?" asked Jana, anger rising in her voice.

  "That's what I had in mind," said Brendan.

  Jana began to struggle in the cramped quarters, trying to get back into her suit. "I'm staying here. There's no point in coming here and then just leaving. I'm not going to share this with the USEC people." She began to push her way into the worksuit.

  Tem grabbed her and pulled her out, like the meat from a crab's claw. "You are crazy, lady." He held her in a crushing bear hug, and eventually she stopped wriggling.

  "Hey, Tem," said Sealock. "When we get home, want to help me build a quantum conversion scanner?"

  The Selenite's eyes seemed to light up. "You've got the components?"

  "We can make what we don't have."

  "Let's go." Brendan relaxed into his command chair and began to plug in. They would make a quick transit home.

  FIVE

  From the interior of the transparent CM dome, John Cornwell stood and stared at nothing. He had participated in the debriefing of the Polaris crew and, after the exhilaration of their safe escape from the Artifact had waned, an apprehension was growing that everything he wanted was going to be drowned out by the alien presence. It wasn't that the Aello find wasn't of huge significance, or that he wasn't moved by the adventure that had overtaken them. But, somehow, it all seemed damned irrelevant when compared to the interior world he and Beth had found. The fact that there were intelligences other than man, and that they were on the trail of information that would revolutionize how the human race would see itself, was not meaningful to him, to his life. It was just a manifestation of a cold, rather pointless external reality. . . . Or was it simply that he felt left out of the adventure; jealous of Sealock, who was now moving into a position of leadership? He could not say. He turned and launched himself to the roof of the CM, and slipped through a small clear bubble cracked three-quarters open. Perhaps Beth would have an insight about his motivation, something that was beyond him.

  They were back in their habitual positions in the central room of the CM. Sealock and Krzakwa were both eating messy-looking pastries and, as explorers will, were holding forth garrulously on the nature of their discovery. "I'm accessing Jana's statistics for the surfaces of the three satellites," said Brendan. "The thing on Aello makes any divergence from Solar System asterology suspect, even though what happened when proto-Iris was coalescing was certain to be a little different." Stroking her ponytail where it curled down over her collarbone, Jana remarked stiffly, "We still know very little about the primordial conditions of planetary formation. There is no statistical sample of—"

  "Jana, even you cannot have failed to notice that Ocypete's 'eye' is not easy to explain. If I didn't know you better I'd say that you are deliberately obscuring things. The old crater above the Artifact was damned peculiar. Why didn't you say something to us about it?"

  "It's always easy to see things in hindsight, you jackass." Evidently a raw nerve had been touched in Hu . "My report wasn't finished, either. I was waiting— waiting—to examine Aello close up and do some crater excavation. Even if I wanted to prove that Aello's morphology was influenced by the impact of a large, virtually indestructible object, I couldn't now!"

  Cornwell was a little taken aback by this contorted reasoning. "Jana," he said, "we all realize that science has certain rigorous protocols. But are you saying you actually suspected something?"

  "I mentioned the unusual features of this system in my preliminary report. I had no intention of allowing the important abstracts Iris offers to be done by someone else." Theasterologist seemed especially vulnerable to John's manifest growing incredulity. "That's certainly my right."

  "OK," said Krzakwa. "OK. What is your real opinion about the melting incident that formed Mare Nostrum?"

  "Considering that this system contained technological objects, I would say that an artificially processed quantity of radiogenic material impacted Ocypete in the same epoch that Aello was hit by the Artifact."

  "Jesus," said Ariane. "That's two. What else is here?"

  "That's for the scanner to find out," said Brendan.

  The process of
constructing a working quantum conversion scanner was principally one of reprogramming the various function boxes which had been used to route some of Shipnet's major elements. A power line was brought out of the main fusion system, since reaching the needed flux-gate thresholds expended vast quantities of energy. They built a superconducting torus mounted on another insulating trivet to act as an accumulator, energy shuttle, and antenna ground. Brendan and Tem stayed in the CM, supervising and structuring the programming, so the on-site work was left up to the others. The communications setup for the colony was still incomplete. There was a period during which both the colony and the Clarke satellite were occulted by the bulk of Ocypete. The result was that they went without contact with the rest of humanity for two days out of every twenty-two. Since lag time was so great anyway, this feature didn't bother anyone much. The only real drawback was that repeat broadcasts of entertainment 'net programs had to be requested, and that was expensive. This relink was different. Enough time had passed for anyone who was interested to have seen the damage to Aello. Tem and Brendan had even taken a break from their labors to join the rest for the moment contact was reestablished.

  Bad news. The first message in was the end of a communication from IAAU, its beginning lost in horizon distortion:

  —radical changes in the appearance of Iris I, leading us to believe that you have without authorization damaged the asterologic record of this world. Our charter enjoins and empowers us to demand explanation within one standard day, penalty to be defined by the courts.

  OCTAVIO JOAQUIER

  Acting Chairman, IAAU

  "Shit," said Brenoan. "They're on to us."

  "Did you believe that no one would notice a change of that magnitude?" asked Jana. "Even if they weren't taking an occasional look from Smith, the USEC ship is within range of low-resolution views. You know they are interested."

  Krzakwa broke from the pack in the central pit and made a little dive into a low recliner that subsided to receive him. "Well, it was a gamble. They should've been satisfied with the data we're sending back. Leave it to some militarist to call up photos a hundred times less sharp than those available simply because they were firsthand. What do we do now?"

  The focus of the conversation began to shift toward the center of the central room as, one by one, Krzakwa was joined in the comfort of the programmable floor. Soon everyone except Harmon was there.

  "Even if we tell them the truth, there isn't anything they can do about it. At least until the Formis Fusion arrives in thirty-five days," said Ariane. "That should be plenty of time."

  "It's a risky business, all right," said John. "Presumably the least that would happen is that we would forfeit our homesteading rights. We could also be placed under ship arrest and held for return to Earth. But the damage is already done. . . . I'm not arguing with the rationale—"

  "They wouldn't have authorized us to explore the Artifact, we all know that," said Demogorgon.

  "As far as I'm concerned, they have no authority out here," said Brendan. "We can defend ourselves with what we've got. If we have to . . ."

  Krzakwa was amused. "That would be a bloody little war."

  "Shall we stall them or tell them the truth?" asked Ariane.

  "I can't see what difference it would make," said Jana, "and I am ready to release my full monograph on the Iridean system, including everything."

  "Go ahead and tell them," said Brendan. "It will be very interesting to hear what threats they come up with."

  Within twenty hours the conversion scanner was complete. Sealock twisted himself in the cramped confines of his equipment-stuffed quarters and stretched, grabbing on to a handhold buried in multicolored waveguides to pull out the kinks in his arm and shoulder muscles. The final stages of microprogramming had been totally up to him, and, though he had managed to purchase several off-the-shelf utility programs from Earth, it was more difficult than he had thought it would be. Even with Tem's encyclopedic knowledge of the physics involved, there were almost insoluble problems in adapting standard-grade circuits to the task.

  Well, he thought, either it'll work or it won't.

  He settled into the machinery, latched the program nodes, and thought, Run, you bastard. And, within the limitations of the device's resolving power, things became transparent. Small-scale variations in mass for a megameter around were sensible to him. Ocypete was like a vast onion of ice with a discontinuous eye and a heavy core. And resting on the surface of the core like a nipple on a breast was the second artifact: just a lump of26 magnesium sharply differentiated from the surrounding material. It was what remained after a container of radioactive26 aluminum more than a kilometer in diameter had decayed and released the heat which had melted their world. Sealock slowly let out his breath. It was obviously some kind of fuel cell. But for what? Not Artifact I, that was certain. His gaze traveled to Podarge. As far as he could ascertain there was nothing anomalous in the makeup of this little moon. Early heating during its period of accretion could account for its structure. Onward to Aello; the mess they had left on the innermost satellite disquieted him. There were no significant peculiarities other than the shocked material and deep-seated cracks formed by the great disruption they hadproduced. Artifact I sat silently in its great crater and told no more of itself. Brendan looked deep into Iris. Down through the cold layers of hydrogen and helium. Down past the neon and carbon monoxide to the thin bank of nitrogen cirrus, then through the cirrus and into a supersaturated layer of nitrogen gas. The sheer size of Iris necessitated peeling back the strata one at a time. Here, as the temperature rose, pressure more than compensated. In the end there was a sea of pressure-contained liquid hydrogen. Beneath that, fractionation could no longer operate. He came to a mixed crust of water and methane ice. Brendan could sense that the scanner had shifted to higher energies. He looked harder and the center of the infrastar was revealed to him. . . . It was there, in the

  >0.5 megabar region.

  It seemed nothing more for a moment than a small bubble. A hollowness at the middle point of everything. But it must be more than that, he thought, rejoicing, to withstand the pressure, it must be a supercraft of unbelievable technology.

  "The torus is starting to drain, Bren," Ariane burst through, startling him. "Anything yet?" Brendan smiled to himself, but his thought projection did not betray his emotion. "Take this feed," he said.

  Somehow, the thought of actually being Beth afforded John an exotic exhilaration. Sitting on a little rise in the moor dome, looking across the ten or so meters of small-flowered heather, he could see himself sitting with the others around the pool. Only it wasn't really he, since all sensory inputs had been cross-circuited between the two of them. For all practical purposes, he was inside the body of the woman and she was in him. He could see that his body was looking at him now, and he waved. He had felt more of a loss than he would have cared to explain upon finding that between his legs was a vulva. But only initially: when he realized that it was only "for a day," so to speak, a feeling of warmth and sexiness came. Perhaps in heavier gravity he would have felt awkward and clumsy adapting to the different center of gravity. But not here. The onlyawkwardness came from interacting with the men of the colony, since he had no intention of fucking them, at least for the moment. He wondered if Beth was having a similar problem—they were not in contact for this experiment.

  Suddenly Ariane appeared at the interdome arch, waving a hand over her head. "Everybody!" she shouted. "The scanner works! Bren's found the main Artifact at the center of Iris!" John leaped up, halfway to the ceiling. Abruptly he was back in his own body, looking across the glistening water of the pool to where Ariane was running toward them. The change of perspective was difficult to deal with and he seemed to black out for a second, though not long enough to fall. When he had recovered, he checked to see if Beth was all right. She had not yet landed from his startled leap, but he could see that she had herself under control. His attention turned back to Ariane.

  "I
t's something approximately five hundred kilometers across located at Iris' center. Bren can't tell anything specific about it because of the limitations of the scanner."

  "Oho!" said Tem, swishing his bare feet around in the water. "This is shaping up into an AIWL

  situation—curiouser, und so weiter! It's a shame that we'll never lay hands on the thing. It might as well be in Andromeda."

  "Can we do any better on sharpening the resolution?" asked Aksinia, pulling herself by one hand out of the water to perch on a strut of the light tower.

  Tem thought for a moment, staring into the clarity of light in the pool. After a moment a hint of that gleam came into his eyes. "You know, I bet we can. But we'll have to disable an even larger segment of Shipnet and reprogram it. That'll be inconvenient. . . ."

  "I think we can do with a little inconvenience," said John.

  Vana Berenguer and Demogorgon lay in bed together, alone in the latter's CM chamber. They had finished making love and were quiescent now, the sheen of sweat collecting into little beads on their bodies and evaporating. The man was wooden-faced, flat on his back and still, staring at theceiling, enmeshed in a web of unspoken thought. The woman lay curled about his side under one arm, looking up at his face, as if totally absorbed in the reality of his presence. It was a classic, ritualized pose, dictated by an ancient culture, placing the two in roles they had never before occupied.

  "Demo?"

  The Arab looked down at her and saw that she appeared happy. He smiled.

  "I love you." It seemed like the thing to say. From all the times past, men and women had said that to each other when they had nothing else to say. It was comforting, like being under a warm blanket on a cold night. Centering on a physical act that should have had no more meaning than the consumption of a satisfying meal, it generated the emotions that it was supposed to stem from. In that sense, love was akin to music.

  Demogorgon nodded and squeezed her to his body. "Yes," he said, "I love you too," and thought, But I love Brendan. It made him want to laugh. What am I? he wondered. What are we all? These emotions, whatever their source, had a comforting feel to them. It was a primitive sort of thing, like hoarding trade goods against an expected social collapse, when other human currency would be valueless. That was it. Selfishly collect all the good moments now, for the bad ones will be coming someday soon. Collect them now, all you can, not caring that others may be suffering from your greed. He rolled over a little and kissed Vana, intending to initiate another round of sex. She put her hand on his abdomen, pressing lightly. There was a harsh sound from the door, randomized periodic noise, and the quatrefoil panels fell open. Harmon Prynne was standing there, holding a lockpick circuit tracer in his hand. He threw the device down and stepped through the portal.