“If you’ll excuse the poetic license, there’s a mystery unique to the space-time within that black hole. If this is a life-form, we may be forced to rethink our definitions of life from the ground up. But it’s just a hypothesis. All we know from that one experiment is that a structure exists. Further investigation is clearly needed. We should run another experiment.”
“You proposed it, they rejected it. So you broke into the distribution system looking for assets to run your experiment. I don’t get it. Is this important enough to run those kinds of risks?”
Agnes gestured again. The hologram disappeared. “If there’s a life-form beyond our imagination inside Kali, I suspect it’s there for a reason. Of course, that hypothesis stands on pretty thin evidence, which is why I haven’t told anyone about it until now. You’re the first.”
“Honored, I’m sure.”
Dr. Agnes proceeded to lay out an astounding hypothesis. Some might say it was ludicrous. But her experiment—and her criminal actions—grew from that hypothesis.
Soon thereafter, Shi’en took her leave. She had learned what she had come to find out.
YOU’LL EITHER BE a weapon or a threat. We’ll have to find out which.
Shiran’s words echoed in Shi’en’s memory. When she’d first heard them, she’d thought they were justified. She had been Shiran’s enemy.
Joining AADD had taught Shi’en how harsh space could be. The environment sometimes turned people into fiends. This was a risk humanity faced as it tried to make a home in space. Yet the pressure exerted by this harsh environment also worked to steadily expand human potential. A species capable of conquering such an environment need fear nothing.
On Shiran’s orders, Shi’en had maintained her surveillance of Dr. Agnes after the experiment—and discovered her attempt to hack into AADD’s distribution system. When she reported this to Shiran, the result was a new assignment with no explanation.
Why had Shiran thought it necessary to put Agnes under surveillance? Shi’en suspected she knew the answer. Shiran had boundless confidence in humanity’s potential, but she also feared its potential for stupidity.
Shi’en paused to ponder how she felt about this herself. AADD had offered her a place in its society. Compared to her life on Earth, it was a far more desirable situation. Still, the feeling of being an outsider had never really left her. Perhaps she’d feel differently one day, but for now she was on the outside.
Shi’en felt neither optimism nor pessimism about humanity’s future. She wouldn’t deny the possibility that the species might propagate throughout the solar system until the sun burned out. Or perhaps humankind would reach some sort of dead end, an impasse that would force the birth of a completely new phase of human potential.
But what did all this mean for her? She had never felt fear. She had never been overconfident. It might be satisfying to continue observing AADD as an outsider. Maybe there was space within AADD for a path of her own, a path with a third-person point of view. The prospect pleased her. Outsiders had their own way of doing things.
Someday, someone may go into space to make contact with that entity—an intelligent entity living inside a black hole, she thought. If it happens, I’d like to be there with Agnes to see it.
Shi’en felt a sudden conviction that the day would come.
2151
In Orbit Around Titania
AADD’s orbital platforms could be linked to create larger structures. Compound Orbital Platform Cecily Neville was just such a structure. Cecily Neville linked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a squared-off U, forming a giant space dock in orbit above Titania. Within the dock’s embrace, work to complete humanity’s first unmanned interstellar probe was entering its final stages.
Agnes was nonplussed. “What was important enough to get you and Shiran to come all the way from Mars?”
The lattice framework of Cecily Neville was pierced by a huge cylinder that included crew quarters; the progress of work in the dock could be monitored from anywhere inside this cylinder. Agnes, Shi’en, and Aguri presently floated in a glassed-in lounge at one end of it.
Aguri Kanda was Shiran’s daughter. Soon she would be five years old. The little girl and her rangy Guardian bodyguard made a strange pair.
“Guardians take vacations too, you know,” said Shi’en. “Commander Kanda came to Uranus for sightseeing. She wanted her daughter to see the accretion disk. It’s by far the biggest thing we’ve ever built, as big as Mars.”
“All right—but why are you here?”
“The commander wants to enjoy some of the sights on her own, but she can’t unless someone looks after Aguri.”
“Maybe her ‘vacation’ with her daughter is just cover for a top-secret investigation with her trusted subordinate?”
“What kind of investigation?”
“How should I know? It’s top secret.”
“Listen, we didn’t come all the way to Uranus for any secret investigation. I’m just here to babysit the kid,” said Shi’en.
“It’s just that a badass ninja riding shotgun for a four-year-old makes less sense than a secret investigation.”
“Children should be protected. They’re not like adults.”
“So you thought I was a child at seventeen?” Agnes said.
“I thought you were an adult at sixteen.”
Shi’en had caught the reference a little too quickly. Agnes hadn’t really meant to dig up the past. It had been six years since Shi’en’s failed attempt to assassinate Agnes. Since then, Agnes had faced danger and brushes with death several times in space. The incident with Shi’en was over and done with as far as she was concerned.
But Shi’en didn’t see it that way. Since joining AADD, she had also faced many dangers, far more than Agnes. Still, she had never been able to put the assassination attempt behind her.
On the whole, the relationship between the two women was positive, but Agnes would hesitate to call it equal. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Don’t apologize. Sometimes you do things you can’t go back and change, that’s all. It’s in my nature to let things go, like water under the bridge. But I don’t think people should forget who they are.”
“You’re pretty hard on yourself.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Sorry about that.”
Aguri stared out the window at the work proceeding on Richard III, oblivious to their conversation. Not that she was so interested in the ship itself. Anything taking place in zero gravity seemed to enchant her.
Christening humanity’s first unmanned interstellar probe Richard III might have seemed somewhat inauspicious, but the use of names from Shakespeare’s plays was an established tradition for Uranus. Unfortunately, most of the names with positive associations had already been taken, leaving only villains and tragic figures. More obscure names like Cecily Neville were suitable for orbital platforms, but an interstellar probe deserved something memorable. Richard III certainly met that requirement. This was another reason why the platform where the probe was under construction had been named Cecily Neville: Cecily Neville, the fifteenth-century Duchess of York, had been Richard III’s mother.
The probe’s design was straightforward, although it looked more like a cargo shipment than a spacecraft. A cluster of fuel tanks, a powerful main engine using matter-antimatter annihilation for propulsion, the engine’s heat sink, and a bulky nose shield designed to protect the probe from interstellar dust—functional beauty it might have, but compared with the refined designs of interplanetary spacecraft, Richard III looked more like a warrior preparing to face the battlefield. This was no accident. In the wastes of interstellar space, the probe would be beyond human help or intervention.
“Listen,” said Shi’en. “You’re not bitter about the way we handled your case five years ago, are you?”
“Why not use the correct term? ‘Criminal activity,’ maybe?”
“All right. How’s this: are you sti
ll bitter about the measures we took after your criminal activity five years ago?”
“Did you travel all the way here to pick a fight with me?”
“I told you, we’re here for sightseeing.”
“There’s another possibility,” Agnes said. “Let’s see… Dr. Agnes is running the interstellar probe project, so she might be plotting more criminal activity. Maybe we’d better get out there and investigate her. Does that sound familiar? This project gives me access to tons of antimatter.”
“Why should you still be under suspicion for a childish prank committed five years ago? Children deserve protection, as I just told you. In fact, the commander is grateful for what you did.”
“Grateful? I have a hard time believing that.”
“You created a phony research project and tried to procure supplies for it. Thanks to you, security for the Distribution Management System and the Sol System Universal Network was redesigned from the ground up. It’s far more reliable now. At least no one’s hacked into it since you managed to. We’ve plugged the holes.”
“Meaning there’s no one more dangerous to you than me.”
“For you to be a threat you’d need capacity and intent. You’ve got the capacity to commit a crime but not the intent. Therefore you’re not a threat. Your involvement in this project proves it,” said Shi’en.
“How can you be sure I’ve given up on that experiment?”
“I’m not. All I need to be sure of is that you’ve given up breaking the law. You’ve changed since then. You’re an adult. Right?”
“I’m an adult. But I haven’t changed.”
Shi’en floated over to where Aguri peered out the window, fascinated by the views of Titania. Shi’en wasn’t cutting the conversation short; rather, she wanted to explain to Aguri what she was seeing. Agnes reluctantly joined them.
Cecily Neville was just passing over Port Shiva. Five years ago, only one percent of the fifteen-hundred-kilometer gorge had been occupied. Now the AAD was fully operational and Port Shiva sprawled across ten percent of the gorge’s length.
The Old City, as the earliest sections were called, had been given over to forest. Trees had been allowed to grow without culling and the resultant natural forest had become an attraction for the inhabitants. In the newer districts of the city, genetically modified dawn redwoods had been planted at regular intervals. The trees were thriving; in a few decades they would be big enough to support habitat platforms.
“Haven’t you seen trees before?” Agnes asked the little girl. In zero gravity she could easily position herself at Aguri’s level. “There are forests on Mars.”
“But on Mars trees don’t go underneath me,” said Aguri. She was riveted by the fascinating sights flowing past. Beyond Port Shiva and the gorge, Titania was blanketed with devices for relaying energy from Kali to the rest of the solar system. This offered a very different view from anything one could see on Mars.
When Kali became a satellite of Uranus, its moons were inevitably affected. The greatest impact fell on Uranus’s largest moon, Titania.
Kali’s orbital insertion was the culmination of two decades of effort. For the first time, humanity had altered the orbit of a celestial body with significant mass. Efforts to change the orbit of the next object—Titania—began immediately. Its distance to Uranus was around 436,000 kilometers. Kali, with a mass close to that of Mars, orbited Uranus at only 550,000 kilometers. Naturally Titania’s orbit would be greatly perturbed by proximity to such a large body.
Kali’s influence threw Titania out of its original orbit and into an elliptical one beyond Oberon, one with a perihelion of 660,000 kilometers and an aphelion of 30,000,000 kilometers. But for Titania to act as a relay station for energy transmission throughout the solar system, this orbit needed further adjustment. Gigantic propulsion devices were built along its equator. Every time Titania reached aphelion the devices would fire, using Kali’s energy to gradually nudge the moon into a circular orbit thirty million kilometers from Uranus. This orbital adjustment had been in progress for several years.
“Are you saying you haven’t given up on that experiment with Kali after all?” Shi’en continued looking down at the surface. “That probe is going to the stars, not into a black hole.”
“Ever heard the expression ‘kill the rider by shooting the horse’? One of this project’s main goals is to search for extraterrestrial life. That’s why we’re not going to just fly by different planetary systems. We’re going to slow down, stop, and investigate thoroughly. That’s why I need so much antimatter.”
“Wouldn’t flybys be technically simpler?”
“Of course. But to spend nearly a decade getting somewhere just to have a few hours for observation isn’t good enough for this mission,” Agnes said. “By carrying enough fuel to decelerate, we can observe continuously over several years. If we run into problems, we can still do flybys.”
“Still… the nearest system is Alpha Centauri, and that’s a triple system. Proxima Centauri has planets, but it’s a flare star. I doubt life could survive under those conditions.”
“You know me—I’m convinced there might be life in the most unlikely places.”
“I knew you lacked common sense even before you ran that experiment with Kali. Still, if the hypothesis you told me about five years ago is correct, this probe might be a way to verify it. Seems like a very slow way, though.”
“Of course, we may not find life, not even life outside our theories of what life is. But even finding nothing would tell us something valuable. The search for life doesn’t have to have positive results to be worthwhile. I can’t ignore the nearest star if that’s the fastest way to test the probe’s capabilities,” Agnes said.
“I see. Well, that makes sense.”
“Now are you convinced that I’m not plotting anything?”
“Pretty touchy, aren’t we? I already told you why we’re here.”
Shi’en noticed that Aguri had drifted over to a different spot along the window. From there she could see the entire length of Richard III.
“Why doesn’t that ship have windows?” Aguri asked Agnes.
“Because nobody’s going to ride in it.” Agnes floated down to Aguri’s level again. The little girl’s eyes widened in surprise. She pointed to the probe accusingly.
“Nobody rides in it? How can it go without people?”
“It has an advanced AI… The ship can think, just like you. That’s why it can go all by itself.”
“Won’t it be lonely with no people?”
“No, it’ll be fine. It’s going to look for friends who understand what it wants.”
By the time Aguri would be old enough to understand Agnes’s real meaning—to understand the concept of extraterrestrial civilizations and intelligent nonhuman entities—the probe would be making its first transmissions from a distant star. Agnes gazed at the little girl, lost in thought. The time required to reach even the closest stars was a significant fraction of the human life span. What could Agnes accomplish in the time left to her?
Agnes and Aguri gazed down at Richard III. Shi’en wordlessly activated her agent. “Professor? White. Just as I expected… Nothing suspicious on your end? I’m not surprised. This probe is what it appears to be. I don’t think this investigation is worth more of our time. You’ll be heading back, then? Yes, that’s a good idea. I can be ready immediately… What? What do you mean, look after Aguri? Why should we stay another week? No, that’s not what I’d call a special vacation. Professor? Professor!”
Shi’en’s agent signaled that the call had been terminated. Shiran’s trust in Shi’en must have been boundless. Either that or Shiran didn’t care much about her daughter.
Shi’en had served under Shiran Kanda for five years without ever quite figuring out what sort of person her boss was. As soon as she thought she understood, Shiran pulled something off the wall—like this. Someone else might assume this meant Shiran trusted her. But Shi’en knew the truth. Shiran w
ould simply never accept that Shi’en—or anyone else who worked for her—was an outsider. From the moment you met Shiran, you were an insider in her eyes.
“Auntie!” Aguri sailed toward Shi’en, heedless of her own inertia. Shi’en caught her carefully, as if the girl were an egg that might break. “Momma told me to stay and play with you.”
Parents often gave their toddlers small webs that could be worn on the wrist. It seemed that Shiran had also given her daughter her own agent program. It would let Shiran stay in touch with Aguri even when Shiran was sleeping.
“Amazing. The badass is also ‘Auntie’?” marveled Agnes.
“Mm-hmm. Momma said she likes to be called that,” the girl said.
“I guess children really are innocent. Right, Shi’en?”
2164
Port Shiva, Titania
Thirteen years had passed since Richard III had departed for Alpha Centauri. In the years that followed, humanity launched one probe after another toward the nearby stars. By 2164 the total had risen to fifteen.
Each probe was functioning as designed, sending data back to the solar system. Of course, a large portion of this data was routine system status information. But as the images of Alpha Centauri became more detailed, scientists began monitoring the data on a daily basis.
Still, thirteen years is a long time for human beings. Most of the original program participants had been reassigned to other departments and were looking after other projects now, their places taken by new people.
Agnes and Aguri were on a dish-shaped structure twenty meters wide. Benches and vegetation gave the area a gardenlike atmosphere. In the center of the dish was a round, roofless brick structure. The structure contained a number of data-processing devices, most of them embedded in the walls.
The dish hung suspended from a dawn redwood, the trees having been incorporated into the structure of Port Shiva itself. This particular dish was one of the control points for the interstellar probe program.
The Ouroboros Wave Page 23
