Year’s Best SF 18

by David G. Hartwell

  The new manager chuckled uncertainly.

  The team all grinned balefully at their new fool, and went to work, donning mitts and helmets. Sophie Renata felt the old familiar tingling, absent from simulation work; the thrilling hesitation and excitement—

  The session ended too soon. Coming back to Earth, letting the lab take shape around her, absent thoughts went through her head; about whether she was going to find a new apartment with Lax. About cooking dinner; about other RP projects. The Mars trip, that would be fantastic, but it was going to be very competitive getting onto the team. Asteroid mining surveys: plenty of work there, boring but well paid. What about the surface of Venus project? And had it always been like this, coming out of the Medici? Had she just forgotten the sharp sense of loss; the little tug of inexplicable panic?

  She looked around. Cha was gazing dreamily at nothing; Lax frowned at her desktop, as if trying to remember a phone number. Josh was looking right back at Sophie, so sad and strange, as if she’d robbed him of something precious; and she had no idea why.

  He shrugged, grinned, and shook his head. The moment passed.

  THE SIGMA STRUCTURE SYMPHONY

  Gregory Benford

  Gregory Benford is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine, working in astrophysics and plasma physics. He has founded several biotech companies. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, his fiction and nonfiction have won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape. Many of his (typically hard) SF stories are collected in In Alien Flesh, Matters End, and Worlds Vast and Various. In 2012, he appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List for Bowl of Heaven, his collaboration with Larry Niven. Shipstar, the sequel, is forthcoming. Starship Century: Laying the Foundations for Interstellar Travel, an original anthology of science fiction and science fact, edited by Gregory and his twin brother, James Benford, appeared in 2013.

  “The Sigma Structure Symphony” was published at Tor.com, as part of a sequence of SF stories inspired by a painting by John Jude Palencar (compare to the Swanwick and Wolfe stories elsewhere in this book). It is also part of a larger project of Benford’s, concerning the future discovery and decoding of messages from alien races through the SETI project.

  Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.

  —Galileo (from The Assayer, 1623)

  1

  Andante

  RUTH FELT THAT math was like sex—get all you can, but best not done in public. Lately, she’d been getting plenty of mathematics, and not much else.

  She had spent the entire morning sequestered alone with the Andromeda Structure, a stacked SETI database of renowned difficulty. She had made some inroads by sifting its logic lattice, with algebraic filters based on set theory. The Andromeda messages had been collected by the SETI Network over decades, growing to immense data-size—and no one had ever successfully broken into the stack.

  The Structure was a daunting, many-layered language conveyed through sensation in her neural pod. It did not present as a personality at all, and no previous Librarians had managed to get an intelligible response from it. Advanced encoded intelligences found humans more than a bit boring, and one seldom had an idea why. Today was no different.

  It was already past lunch when she pried herself from the pod. She did some stretches, hand-walks, and lifts against Luna’s weak grav and let the immersion fog burn away. Time for some real world, gal.…

  She passed through the atrium of the SETI Library, head still buzzing with computations and her shoes ringing echoes from the high, fluted columns. Earthlight framed the great plaza in an eggshell blue glow, augmented by slanting rays from the sun that hugged the rocky horizon. She gazed out over the Locutus Plain, dotted with the cryo towers that reminded her of cenotaphs. So they were—sentinels guarding in cold storage the vast records of received SETI signals, many from civilizations long dead. Collected through centuries, and still mostly unread and unreadable. AIs browsed those dry corridors and reported back their occasional finds. Some even got entangled in the complex messages and had to be shut down, hopelessly mired.

  She had just noticed the buzzing crowd to her left, pressed against the transparent dome that sheltered the Library, when her friend Catkejen tapped her on the shoulder. “Come on! I heard somebody’s up on the rec dome!”

  Catkejen took off loping in the low grav and Ruth followed. When they reached the edge of the agitated crowd she saw the recreational dome about two klicks away—and a figure atop it.

  “Who is it?” Catkejen asked, and the crowd gave back, “Ajima Sato.”

  “Ajima?” Catkejen looked at Ruth. “He’s five years behind us, pretty bright. Keeps to himself.”

  “Pretty common pattern for candidate Hounds,” Ruth said. The correct staffing title was Miners, but Hounds had tradition on its side. She looked around; if a Prefect heard she would be fined for improper terminology.

  “How’d he get there?” someone called.

  “Bulletin said he flew inside, up to the dome top and used the vertical lock.”

  “Looks like he’s in a skin suit,” Catkejen said, having closeupped her glasses. Sure enough, the figure was moving and his helmet caught the sunlight, winking at them. “He’s … dancing.”

  Ruth had no zoom glasses but she could see the figure cavorting around the top of the dome. The Dome was several kilometers high and Ajima was barely within view of the elevated Plaza, framed against a rugged gray crater wall beyond. The crowd murmured with speculation and a Prefect appeared, tall and silent but scowling. Librarians edged away from him. “Order, order,” the Prefect called. “Authorities will deal with this.”

  Ruth made a stern cartoon face at Catkejen and rolled her eyes. Catkejen managed not to laugh.

  Ajima chose this moment to leap. Even from this far away Ruth could see him spring up into the vacuum, make a full backflip, and come down—to land badly. He tried to recover, sprang sideways, lost his footing, fell, rolled, tried to grasp for a passing stanchion. Kept rolling. The dome steepened and he sped up, not rolling now but tumbling.

  The crowd gasped. Ajima accelerated down the slope. About halfway down the dome the figure left the dome’s skin and fell outward, skimming along in the slow Lunar gravity. He hit the tiling at the base. The crowd groaned. Ajima did not move.

  Ruth felt the world shift away. She could not seem to breathe. Murmurs and sobs worked through the crowd but she was frozen, letting the talk pass by her. Then as if from far away she felt her heart tripping hard and fast. The world came rushing back. She exhaled.

  Silence. The Prefect said, “Determine what agenda that Miner was working upon.” All eyes turned to him but no one said anything. Ruth felt a trickle of unease as the Prefect’s gaze passed by her, returned, focused. She looked away.

  * * *

  CATKEJEN SAID, “WHAT? The Prefect called you?”

  Ruth shrugged. “Can’t imagine why.” Then why is my gut going tight?

  “I got the prelim blood report on Ajima. Stole it off a joint lift, actually. No drugs, nothing interesting at all. He was only twenty-seven.”

  Ruth tried to recall him. “Oh, the cute one.”

  Catkejen nodded. “I danced with him at a reception for new students. He hit on me.”

  “And?”

  “You didn’t notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “He came back here that night.”

  Ruth blinked. “Maybe I’m too focused. You got him into your room without me…”

  “Even looking up from your math cowl.” Catkejen grinned mischievously, eyes twinkling. “He was
quite nice and, um, quite good, if y’know what I mean. You really should … get out more.”

  “I’ll do that right after I see the Prefect.”

  A skeptical laugh. “Of course you will.”

  * * *

  SHE TOOK THE long route to her appointment. The atmosphere calmed her.

  Few other traditional sites in the solar system could approach the grandeur of the Library. Since the first detection of signals from other galactic civilizations centuries before, no greater task had confronted humanity than the deciphering of such vast lore.

  The Library itself had come to resemble its holdings: huge, aged, mysterious in its shadowy depths, with cobwebs both real and mental. In the formal grand pantheon devoted to full-color, moving statues of legendary SETI Interlocutors, and giving onto the Seminar Plaza, stood the revered block of black basalt: the Rosetta Stone, symbol of all they worked toward. Its chiseled face was millennia old, and, she thought as she passed its bulk, endearingly easy to understand. It was a simple linear, one-to-one mapping of three human languages, found by accident. Having the same text in Greek II, which the discoverers could read, meant that they could deduce the unknown languages in hieroglyphic pictures and cursive Demotic forms. This battered black slab, found by troops clearing ground to build a fort, had linked civilizations separated by millennia. So too did the SETI Library, on a galactic scale. Libraries were monuments not so much to the Past, but to Permanence itself.

  She arrived at the Prefect’s door, hesitated, adjusted her severe Librarian shift, and took a deep breath. Gut still tight …

  Prefects ruled the Library and this one, Masoul, was a Senior Prefect as well. Some said he had never smiled. Others said he could not, owing to a permanently fixed face. This was not crazy; some Prefects and the second rank, the Noughts, preferred to give nothing away by facial expression. The treatment relieved them of any future wrinkles as well.

  A welcome chime admitted her. Masoul said before she could even sit, “I need you to take on the task Ajima was attempting.”

  “Ah, he isn’t even dead a day—”

  “An old saying, ‘Do not cry until you see the coffin,’ applies here.”

  Well, at least he doesn’t waste time. Or the simple courtesies.

  Without pause the Prefect gave her the background. Most beginning Miners deferred to the reigning conventional wisdom. They took up a small message, of the sort a Type I Civilization just coming onto the galactic stage might send—as Earth had been, centuries before. Instead, Ajima had taken on one of the Sigma Structures, a formidable array that had resisted the best Library minds, whether senior figures or AIs. The Sigmas came from ancient societies in the galactic hub, where stars had formed long before Sol. Apparently a web of societies there had created elaborate artworks and interlacing cultures. The average star there was only a light-year or two away, so actual interstellar visits had been common. Yet the SETI broadcasts Earth received repeated in long cycles, suggesting they were sent by a robotic station. Since they yielded little intelligible content, they were a long-standing puzzle, passed over by ambitious Librarians.

  “He remarked that clearly the problem needed intuition, not analysis,” the Prefect said dryly.

  “Did he report any findings?”

  “Some interesting cataloges of content, yes. Ajima was a bright Miner, headed for early promotion. Then … this.”

  Was that a hint of emotion? The face told her nothing. She had to keep him talking. “Is there any, um, commercial use from what he found?”

  “Regrettably, no. Ajima unearthed little beyond lists of properties—biologicals, math, some cultural vaults, the usual art and music. None particularly advanced, though their music reminded me of Bach—quite a compliment—but there’s little of it. They had some zest for life, I suppose … but I doubt there is more than passing commercial interest in any of it.”

  “I could shepherd some through our licensing office.” Always appear helpful.

  “That’s beneath your station now. I’ve forwarded some of the music to the appropriate officer. Odd, isn’t it, that after so many centuries, Bach is still the greatest human composer? We’ve netted fine dividends from the Scopio musical works, which play well as baroque structures.” A sly expression flitted across his face. “Outside income supports your work, I remind you.”

  Centuries ago some SETI messages had introduced humans to the slow-motion galactic economy. Many SETI signals were funeral notices or religious recruitments, brags and laments, but some sent autonomous AI agents as part of the hierarchical software. These were indeed agents in the commercial sense, able to carry out negotiations. They sought exchange of information at a “profit” that enabled them to harvest what they liked from the emergent human civilization. The most common “cash” was smart barter, with the local AI agent often a hard negotiator—tough-minded and withholding. Indeed, this sophisticated haggling opened a new window onto the rather stuffy cultural SETI transmissions. Some alien AIs loved to quibble; others sent preemptory demands. Some offers were impossible to translate into human terms. This told the Librarians and Xenoculturists much by reading between the lines.

  “Then why summon me?” Might as well be direct, look him in the eye, complete with skeptical tilt of mouth. She had worn no makeup, of course, and wore the full-length gown without belt, as was traditional. She kept her hands still, though they wanted to fidget under the Prefect’s gaze.

  “None of what he found explains his behavior.” The Prefect turned and waved at a screen. It showed color-coded sheets of array configurations—category indices, depth of Shannon content, transliterations, the usual. “He interacted with the data slabs in a familiarization mode of the standard kind.”

  “But nothing about this incident seems standard,” she said to be saying something.

  “Indeed.” A scowl, fidgeting hands. “Yesterday he left the immersion pod and went first to his apartment. His suite mate was not there and Ajima spent about an hour. He smashed some furniture and ate some food. Also opened a bottle of a high alcohol product whose name I do not recognize.”

  “Standard behavior when coming off watch, except for the furniture,” she said. He showed no reaction. Lightness was not the right approach here.

  He chose to ignore the failed joke. “His friends say he had been depressed, interspersed with bouts of manic behavior. This final episode took him over the edge.”

  Literally, Ruth thought. “Did you ask the Sigma Structures AI?”

  “It said it had no hint of this…”

  “Suicidal craziness.”

  “Yes. In my decades of experience, I have not seen such as this. It is difficult work we do, with digital intelligences behind which lie minds utterly unlike ours.” The Prefect steepled his fingers sadly. “We should never assume otherwise.”

  “I’ll be on guard, of course. But … why did Ajima bother with the Sigma Structures at all?”

  A small shrug. “They are a famous uncracked problem and he was fresh, bright. You too have shown a talent for the unusual.” He smiled, which compared with the other Prefects was like watching the sun come out from behind a cloud. She blinked, startled. “My own instinct says there is something here of fundamental interest … and I trust you to be cautious.”

  2

  Allegretto Misterioso

  SHE CLIMBED INTO her pod carefully. Intensive exercise had eased her gut some, and she had done her meditation. Still, her heart tripped along like an apprehensive puppy. Heart’s engine, be thy still, she thought, echoing a line she had heard in an Elizabethan song—part of her linguistic background training. Her own thumper ignored her scholarly advice.

  She had used this pod in her extensive explorations of the Sagittarius Architecture and was now accustomed to its feel, what the old hands called its “get.” Each pod had to be tailored to the user’s neural conditioning. Hers acted as a delicate neural web of nanoconnections, tapping into her entire body to convey connections.

  Afte
r the cool contact pads, neuro nets cast like lace across her. In the system warm-ups and double checks the pod hummed in welcome. Sheets of scented amber warmth washed over her skin. A prickly itch irked across her legs.

  A constellation of subtle sensory fusions drew her to a tight nexus—linked, tuned to her body. Alien architectures used most of the available human input landscape, not merely texts. Dizzying surges in the eyes, cutting smells, ringing notes. Translating these was elusive. Compared with the pod, meager sentences were a hobbled, narrow mode. The Library had shown that human speech, with its linear meanings and weakly linked concepts, was simple, utilitarian, and typical of younger minds along the evolutionary path.

  The Sigma Structures were formidably dense and strange. Few Librarians had worked on them in this generation, for they had broken several careers, wasted on trying to scale their chilly heights.

  Crisply she asked her pod, “Anything new on your analysis?”

  The pod’s voice used a calm, mellow woman’s tone. “I received the work corpus from the deceased gentleman’s pod. I am running analysis now, though fresh information flow is minor. The Shannon entropy analysis works steadily but hits halting points of ambiguity.”

  The Shannon routines looked for associations between signal elements. “How are the conditional probabilities?”

  The idea was simple in principle. Given pairs of elements in the Sigma Structures, how commonly did language elements B follow elements A? Such two-element correlations were simple to calculate across the data slabs. Ruth watched the sliding, luminous tables and networks of connection as they sketched out on her surrounding screens. It was like seeing into the architecture of a deep, old labyrinth. Byzantine pathways, arches and towers, lattice networks of meaning.

  Then the pod showed even higher-order correlations of three elements. When did Q follow associations of B and A? Arrays skittered all across her screens.