by Ian Douglas
“Maybe the problem is that this isn’t a virdrama,” she told him. “Real life is never as neatly ordered—or as explicable—as fiction.”
. . . the Six Suns of the future . . .
. . . the Spinning Gateways . . .
. . . if the ephemerals upset the balance of . . .
. . . we must not . . .
. . . they must not . . .
“Are you recording all of this?” Gray asked McKennon.
“Of course. Aren’t you?”
“I am. It’s good to have a backup, though. You may be picking up pieces that my hardware misses.”
“Good thought.”
“Konstantin should be able to untangle it all later. But I do wish we knew what the argument was about now.”
“Ask the Agletsch.”
“Damn it. Of course. . . .” He shifted channels. “Aar’mithdisch? What are they arguing about? Explain it for my poor, underdeveloped human brain.”
“They do not argue . . . not precisely. There is doubt that the imagery you bring from the remote future represents what is really happening. Two—the Adjugredudhra and the Baondyeddi—think it likely that the galactic Dyson sphere you’ve imaged here is in fact something built by the far-future descendents of the Sh’daar Collective. If that is true, of course, there is nothing about which they need to be concerned . . . yes-no?”
“The Glothr records show Sh’daar species fleeing the galaxy.”
“The term ‘Sh’daar’ may have no meaning—or pertinence—in another four Galactic rotations.
“Too, others continue to insist that a billion years is too long an expanse of time for anyone to worry about what lies beyond. Those inhabited worlds fleeing into intergalactic space could be the future equivalent of Refusers, for example, or a defeated faction . . . or almost anything else at all. Nearly a billion years is a very long period of time, in which cultures will likely evolve and change out of all recognition.”
“How . . . ephemeral of them. . . .”
“Some Sh’daar species are extremely long-lived,” the Agletsch said. “They tend to take what you humans call the long view . . . and with good reason. But most feel the problems of today are more than enough to occupy their full attention . . . yes-no?”
“Time travel rather puts a different spin on things, though,” Gray pointed out. “What the Sh’daar do here, in the N’gai Cluster, has spread to my own time.”
“Of course. But of greater moment . . . the technically advanced species of the remote future may be able to travel back in time and affect what happens here. The Glothr, clearly, can do this. You humans have done it, by means of the TRGA cylinders. What terrifies the decision makers of the Collective is the possibility that someone . . . you, the Glothr . . . the Rosette Aliens will come back to this time or before and wipe out all that they have built here.”
“Why? What are they building that is so damned important?” He meant the words lightly, a kind of joke.
The Agletsch liaison answered him, though. “They seek to undo the Technological Singularity, which destroyed their former totsch.”
The Agletsch word was not easily translated. According to Konstantin-2’s database, though, it carried elements of the words “glory,” “reputation,” and “effectiveness.” Gray decided that a good fit might be the Asian concept of face.
Could that be the answer? The Sh’daar had set out on their anti-singularity jihad because they were embarrassed? Because they felt they’d lost face?
It didn’t seem reasonable. And yet, knowing the human causes for so much of their own history, maybe that shouldn’t be surprising.
“The war itself may be an emergent phenomenon,” Konstantin-2 whispered in Gray’s thoughts, almost as though reading them.
“What do you mean?”
“The Collective consists of several diverse species, each with its own agenda . . . and with numerous individual members of each species with their own goals and desires, all interacting with one another in essentially unpredictable ways. The pro-singularity Sh’daar who attacked us upon our arrival are a case in point.”
“So?”
“Emergent behavior is defined as a larger pattern or behavior arising from interactions among smaller or simpler entities which may not, themselves, display that behavior. Mind arising from trillions of neural synaptic connections would be one such. Life itself, emerging from the associated cells of an organism, is another.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. But war?”
“It seems evident that no one of the Sh’daar species rules or dominates the others. All do fear a repeat of their singularity event, however, and seek to prevent this. Their interaction with one another, however, might have led to a social acceptance of warfare as a means to an end, and the attitudes of other species would reinforce the emerging group ethic.”
“Like a lynch mob,” Gray said slowly.
“Precisely. One human alone might be unwilling to execute another human, but a large group, with the members exciting one another, would not hesitate. Humans have demonstrated this principle time and time again, in Nazi Germany, in Soviet Russia, in the Chinese Hegemony . . .”
“So what do we do about it?”
“Unknown. Improved lines of communication will help.”
“Of course it would. The problem is we can’t even understand them now.”
The ephemerals try to deceive us. . . .
The ephemerals are of no consequence. . . .
We should investigate the Rosette intelligence. . . .
Who’d said that? Gray checked the datastream, and had Konstantin-2 tease out the tagline on the statement. It was the Sjhlurrr.
The Sjhlurrr posed an interesting problem for those studying the Sh’daar Collective of species, Gray thought. According to the data acquired twenty years ago, the red-golden slugs appeared to be less psychologically attached to a particular body image than were humans. Evidently, they’d used advanced genetic techniques to alter their ponderous and often inconvenient forms, transferring their considerable intellects into other, smaller and more mobile organic bodies in myriad shapes and sizes.
“I wonder,” McKennon said, “if that’s the Sjhlurrr’s real shape.”
She seemed to be reading his thoughts. “I thought the Refusers rejected the idea of genetic manipulation.”
“Some did. But just as not all of the ur-Sh’daar went along with the technologies that kicked off their singularity, not all members of a species buy into a single ideology or meme. Think of how diverse human beliefs are.”
“I guess so. It’s easy to see all aliens as alike. . . .”
“There are some. One F’heen is pretty much identical to every other F’heen in its swarm, both genetically and in its worldview. They form telepathic group minds, so they kind of have to all look at the world the same way, not only within their home swarm, but among all swarms. But for most other species? No, they’re as much individuals within their own groups as are humans.”
Gray thought about that statement for a moment. While he agreed in principle, he was not completely convinced. For a long time, humans had assumed that the near-mythic Sh’daar were a single alien species, the monolithic power behind an alliance of galactic species within the Tprime epoch that they’d set to attacking humans. When the America battlegroup had first traveled back in time to the N’gai Cluster, Humankind had discovered that the Sh’daar were, in fact, an assembly of several dozen star-faring species working together . . . an empire of sorts, spanning both space and time, united in the need to stop other species from entering their own technological singularities.
And something about that idea simply did not make sense. Gray felt like he was tantalizingly close to seeing a larger picture, a motive behind Sh’daar decisions and actions, something that humans had not yet grasped. It had to do with what McKennon had just said about diversity within the separate species . . . but he couldn’t quite grasp it.
With a mental shrug, he decided to look
at it later. Maybe Konstantin-2 would be able to help pin down what was bothering him.
The Sjhlurrr, meanwhile, appeared to have the floor. It was urging a consensus among the Sh’daar in the circle, a decision to send a major military force through to the future and there confront the mysterious beings of the Black Rosette.
Our course is clear, the being said, addressing all of the beings in the circle. Some of us have already traveled to the remote future to work with star-faring species there . . . and to prosecute the recent war with the humans, so this is not an issue of feasibility. We need to dispatch a task force, one of considerable size and strength, and attempt to make direct contact with these Rosette Aliens the humans describe. We need information to know what this presence in the galaxy is and what its intentions are before we make any further decisions about Earth, and the human role in the Collective. . . .
The human role in the Collective. Gray shook his virtual head.
No . . . he did not like this at all.
Chapter Seven
2 November 2425
TC/USNA CVS America
Admiral’s Quarters
2125 hours, TFT
“This is it,” Gray said, stepping aside at the door. “Welcome to my humble abode, such as it is. . . .”
Harriet McKennon entered the room, which came alive as it detected her body heat and motion. “This is incredible!” she said, looking about with pleased surprise. “I didn’t know Navy officers lived this well!”
“Well, junior officers bunk two to a room,” he told her. “Sometimes four to a room, if things are tight, especially on smaller ships. But one thing a star carrier does have in abundance is space.”
“Ha . . . ha . . .” she said with mocking deliberation, lightly punching his arm. “Very funny.”
As the room came on, the domed overhead displayed a view of space outside—clotted masses of brilliant, close-packed stars; the brighter glare of the Six Suns; myriad orbital facilities, artificial worlds and deep-space habitats; industrial construction projects; the nearby globe of Daar N’gah, bright with cities sprawled across its surface.
“Nice view,” she told him.
Gray had been surprised when McKennon had accepted his invitation to dinner on board America, and more surprised still when she’d come to his quarters. He’d almost not asked her . . . and had felt as shy and awkward as a first-year Downloader asking a girl for a first date.
“So . . . what do you think of Sh’daar motivations?” he asked her, cutting the tension just a bit. “You’ve been here . . . how long?”
“Eight months,” she told him. “Deep Time One became operational in April. I was with the first science team deployment.”
“Are they serious about peace with humans?”
“I think so,” she said, giving the “I” the slightest of emphasis.
“You don’t sound real sure.”
“Well . . . it’s really hard to be absolutely sure of what they’re thinking, you know? It’s not like they share human values, or think like us, or anything. . . .”
“I hear you.”
Different human cultures could be wildly different, with differing worldviews, different attitudes, mutually alien religions, social structure, and ideologies . . . and those differences had more than once led to war.
How much worse was it when the two cultures in question were literally alien to one another, the products of completely different evolutionary paths, completely different psychologies and worldviews.
“Drink? Inhalant?”
“Love one.”
“What’s your poison?”
“Can you make a jovian?”
“I think the bar can manage that.”
He busied himself at the compact bar in one corner of the room. He didn’t indulge in nano-stim inhalants himself—he had trouble handling the feed from his implants—but the room’s bar had a sophisticated and well-programmed replicator suite that could turn out a decent ’halant in fairly short order. He punched up a nada colada for himself. He didn’t care for the falseness of values brought on by alcohol, and saw no point in getting buzzed only to have to immediately de-buzz with nanosoborifics.
Besides, he preferred a clear mind.
“Is bare okay?” she asked.
“Uh . . . sure. Be comfortable.”
She touched a contact point on the shoulder of her civilian jumpsuit, and the fabric of her clothing evaporated. Casual social nudity was the norm in Western society, of course, but Gray still had some ingrained taboos from his upbringing in the Manhatt Ruins. He hesitated, then dissolved his uniform. Being dressed while she was nude felt more uncomfortable than the alternative.
A thoughtclick caused a comfortable sofa to grow out of the carpeted deck. They sat together, leaning back, watching the strangeness of the sky.
“I thought this part of your ship was under spin?” she said.
“It is.” He tapped the deck with a bare foot. “Best gravity money can buy.”
“Then how?”
“The image is from a set of cameras mounted on our shieldcap forward,” he told her. “The room’s AI delivers the image, and does it pretty seamlessly. It could run a simulated image instead, of course, but I like knowing I’m looking at the real thing.”
“Of course. Stupid of me.”
“Not stupid at all. Technology is such a pervasive part of our lives, it’s impossible to grasp it all, or know how all of it works. We simply accept it . . . take it all for granted.”
“I just wasn’t thinking. I guess I just expected the view to be rotating all the time, like it usually does over on DT-1.”
“I can have it spin if you prefer.” Another thoughtclick, and the starfields began moving, matching the twice-per-minute rotation of America’s spin-gravity habitat modules.
“Actually, I liked it better the other way.”
“Your wish is the AI’s command.” The rotation came to a halt. “Having it spin makes me dizzy.”
“Can’t have the admiral in command of Battlegroup America getting spacesick, now, can we?”
“That wouldn’t do at all,” he agreed. “Especially with such charming company. . . .”
Curious, though. Simulations and virtual realities were such a basic, intimate part of modern life that it seemed strange that she’d not picked up on the illusion displayed overhead. For a moment, he wondered if she, like he, was a Prim. Primitives from the cast-off Peripheries around the borders of the United States of North America weren’t brought up with the myriad complexities of virtual reality, cerebral implants, and full-field holography that were the hallmark of modern technic life, and could easily miss something like that.
But not someone who’d grown up with it.
Well . . . it scarcely mattered. Maybe she’d just been making conversation . . . maybe with an eye toward appearing vulnerable to him. He put his arm on the back of the sofa behind her head. She responded by snuggling a bit closer.
She inhaled from the silver sphere in her hand. “Mmm. Good.” She glanced up at him. “You didn’t seem very happy this afternoon at the idea of a Sh’daar expeditionary force to Tee-sub-prime.”
“Didn’t I?” he asked her. “I was the one that gave them the invitation. . . .”
“I know, but I also know you were following orders. And I don’t think you cared for those orders at all.”
He sighed. “No. But it does seem to be the only way to make contact with the Rosette Aliens. They sure as hell aren’t listening to us.”
She nodded. “I know. I . . . had a lover, once. Sheri Hodgkins . . .”
He frowned. “That name is familiar.” He ran a quick search through his implant RAM. “Captain Sheri Hodgkins?”
“Of the RSV Endeavor. Yes.”
“Damn. I’m sorry. . . .”
Endeavor and her two military escorts, Miller and Herrera, had been lost just over a year ago while exploring the Black Rosette at the heart of the Omega Centauri cluster. The data they’d coll
ected—images of something astonishing emerging from the maw between the whirling black holes—had at first been interpreted as the Sh’daar entering the Milky Way Galaxy of Humankind from the remote past.
The Endeavor and her escorts, it was now believed, had been accidentally destroyed by a super-intelligence emerging from the Black Rosette, an intelligence that hadn’t even realized that they were there.
Humanity’s first encounter with the Rosette Aliens.
And Sheri Hodgkins had been Endeavor’s skipper.
“So, I guess you know about the Rosette Aliens not listening to us. . . .”
“Yeah. I do.” She inhaled another whiff of her jovian. “’S’funny. I was almost on board the Endeavor myself. I’d been selected for a slot in her xenosoph department, and I’d been downloading contact protocols like crazy in preparation, y’know?”
He nodded. “What happened?”
“Sheri and I were married.”
“So . . .”
“Monogamously.”
Light dawned. “Ah . . .”
“Exactly. ‘Ah.’ I failed the psych exam.”
Within the broad sweep of Western culture, casual sexual liaisons were almost universally accepted with no problem, as were most flavors of poly relationships—line marriages, group marriages, and the like. Monogamous marriage, while not forbidden, exactly, was generally deemed to be odd. Monogies were denizens of the Peripheries, where two people might bond with each other to watch each other’s back. Gray knew. He’d been a monogie, been in a monogie marriage in the Manhatt Ruins until Angela’s illness had forced him to enter the USNA proper to get her treatment.
That treatment had resulted in Angela leaving him and ultimately joining a line marriage in New York. And Gray had joined the Navy to pay for it.
The memory—he refused to have it edited—still burned like hell, but he’d gotten over it . . . mostly.
There was enough prejudice still within the USNA proper against monogie relationships to make things tough for them at times. Hexagon policy wasn’t supposed to discriminate—it had accepted Gray, after all, despite his monogamous perversions—but every once in a while that old prejudice would rear its ugly head and try to make an example of someone. Failing the psych test probably meant that someone up the line had decided that it was a bad idea to have a married couple—McKennon and Hodgkins—on board the same ship, especially when one of them was the vessel’s commanding officer. It would have been easier to replace a member of the survey vessel’s science team than her CO, especially at short notice.
