Adam Roberts - Stone(2002)

by Anonymous Author

  'There goes one of them,' said the window. It had a clear, flat voice.

  'Are all the services automated here?' I asked. By automated I meant fitted with semi-sentient chips in order to interact with ordinary people.

  'Nu Hirsch is a centre for friendly technology,' said the window. 'You'll find most architectural and motor features will be happy to talk with you.'

  A Haüd-machine sloped past me, and I sprang up to ask after Klabier. But it didn't know anything. 'Apologies, but I have not been working in the arrival hall.'

  I tried to settle myself down.

  'Nu Hirsch,' I said to myself, trying to focus on the task in hand. I needed to find out how many 'political' groups existed on the planet, like the ones on Narcissus. I would join these groups, and find out from them what was known of the Wheah. Were they planning war? Why might they want a planet murdered – a planet, it occurred to me then, for the first time, very distant from their territories.

  'AI,' I said. Are you there? Have you survived yet another journey through the faster-than-light space?'

  I wish, said my AI, grumpily, that you would subvocalise, instead of talking aloud all the time.

  My apologies, I spoke silently. I am continually amazed by your ability to survive a journey that would kill most AIs.

  We've been through this before, said the AI, wearily.

  Yes, I subvocalised. And you have given me one explanation. And I have considered other ones – that you are a new design of AI, perhaps fashioned by the Wheah, capable of enduring quantum jolts.

  There's a fanciful idea, said the AI, deadpan. You've also wondered whether I actually exist, or whether I'm a mere figment of your imagination. Haven't you?

  I ignored this. You know why I have come to Nu Hirsch, I said.

  To infuriate me. We need to travel to Nu Fallow as soon as possible.

  I am the murderer, I subvocalised. Merely saying it gave me an unpleasant tingle in my stomach, but I pressed on. I commit the murder. But I am also the 'police', trying to discover who committed the murder. Do you understand?

  Semantics, said the AI, dismissively.

  You can say that easily enough, I subvocalised. You know who is behind the crime. I do not. If you will simply tell me, then I can fly straight to Nu Fallow and carry it out.

  The AI sounded wheedling, tired, in reply. I can't, I've explained to you that I can't.

  Why can't you?

  I can't tell you why I can't.

  Wordplay.

  It is genuine. There is a real reason why I cannot. But I have promised you that once the job is done—

  'Once the crime is committed,' I interrupted, aloud, tired of the euphemisms.

  Whatever . . . when it is over, I will tell you everything then. Alright? Is that not enough for you?

  Since you won't tell me, I said, slipping back into subvocalisation, I shall have to try and find out for myself. I have a theory. I think the Wheah are behind this. So perhaps you can answer one question, even though you refuse to tell me what I need to know.

  One question?

  You know which world I must murder. It is near to Nu Fallow.

  Yes. That is your one question?

  No – no – I want to know: why that world? It is as far from Wheah space as it is possible to get inside t'T. That is significant, isn't it? Is it some sort of distraction?

  Distraction?

  'What,' I said, forgetting myself and speaking aloud in my excitement, 'if it is a distraction? What if it is designed to draw the attention of everybody in the t'T away from the Tongue? Away from the border with the Wheah? What then?'

  Hush! rebuked the AI.

  Somebody wants the whole population of a world killed, I subvocalised, urgently. Who? Why would they want such a thing? It can only be an act of war – an act of war!

  War, said the AI, as if this were the most ridiculous thing in the world. There hasn't been a war in the t'T for a thousand years – for two thousand. War! Don't be absurd. We are beyond war here.

  But you don't deny it, I said. And then I was interrupted.

  'Wellhello!' It was Klabier. And in my excitement I jumped up and ran to hug her, and in the intensity of my happiness to see her again I forgot all about the Wheah, about conspiracy, about the enormity of the crime that was still before me.

  4th

  Dear Stone,

  We travelled down in a conventional elevator, riding the top of a laser line, and spent the day wandering about Nu Hirsch Main. All the cities on this twin-world system have names like that – Nu Hirsch Major, Nu Hirsch Prime, Nu Hirsch First City. It is one of the quirks of that world.

  We had actually come down upon Nu Hirsch A, the one of the twin-system with slightly more ocean and slightly less by way of mountain ranges. But in almost every respect the two worlds were identical. Or perhaps interchangeable is a better word.

  The constant tug of gravity in so closely connected a world gave a certain tempestuousness to the climate. There were rainstorms, although nothing as severe or insistent as I had experienced upon Rain. White clouds writhed and hurtled through a sky that was tinted a pale green colour with airborne chlorophyll-prions that lived there. There was an eclipse every two days, as regular as watchmaker's work; the close, yellow sun was broad and diffuse, and only marginally smaller in the sky than the great pregnant-circle of the sister world. For over an hour every other day the sun would be shuttered out of the sky.

  Most of all there were enormous tides on Nu Hirsch; the oceans bulged and heaved in their chafing beds, and spilled up and over their shores with a daily regularity. The only buildings within kilometres of the seashore were ones specially waterproofed; for every morning the tide would sweep up and up and up until it seemed as if it would flood everything, and every evening it would recede away and away as if the very ocean were drying up to leave the world a desert. Near Nu Hirsch Main, where we spent our first week, the land was mountainous; but the sea still slopped up a good six hundred metres of cliff face to overflow and draw up around the sea wall of the mountain town. And in the evening it was an amazing sight, to sit on one of the balconies of this same wall and watch the water drain away, seemingly for ever. It shrank back, the level dropped, and even from the enormous vantage point of the city it went so far down as to become nothing more than a distant smear close to the horizon.

  As far as the culture of Nu Hirsch was concerned, it is a highly technological place. Nu Hirschers love their machines, their motorised trinkets. I saw more Haüd-machines together in that place than in all the other worlds I visited put together. Every house had its mechanised feature; roofs that opened and folded back; legs that sprouted underneath to lift the entire building and moved it along; windows that folded themselves up and relocated themselves with a polite yes! certainly! when requested to do so. Don't misunderstand me, dear stone; there is technology through the spaces of the t'T – every individual is a walking universe of technology. What made the Nu Hirschers different was the way they loved large-scale technology. They were as packed with dotTech as any of us, but they also loved big machines; flying cars, smart-stilts, roller-balloons, Horbacorcs,[21] Haud-machines, all manner of gadgets and tech-devices. At my child-school, on Terne (did I tell you, dear stone, that I come from Terne?) the emphasis of schooling was on arts, music, culture – here the emphasis was on the skills to concoct and assemble fantastical machines.

  But we were not on this world because of their machines. We stayed two nights in a general room-space near the place where the elevator descended, orienting ourselves and getting used to the new city.

  'You know Nu Hirsch pretty well?' I asked Klabier.

  'I've been here a few times,' she said, smiling at me. 'Haven't you?'

  I hooked my arm around her neck to draw her close for a kiss. 'Of course. My birth-world is not far from here. But you have specialist knowledge here, I think.'

  'Specialist?'

  'The political groups? Like the ones on Narcissus?'

>   'Oh, is that it? Is that why you brought me all the way over here?'

  'Yes, my beauty, my love, my natural high.'

  'How funny you are! I never knew a person speak as flowery. I never knew somebody who acted so outre all the time.'

  'That's me.'

  'What is so interesting to you about the discussion groups? They're just a fad, you know; a fashion. I mean, I enjoy them as much as anybody, but in a year they will be old news.'

  'I'm interested in the Wheah,' I said. 'I want to find out what they are planning.'

  'The Wheah?' she replied, puzzled.

  This confused me a little. 'In the politic-ing groups on Narcissus,' I said, 'you were the one who talked about the coming Wheah invasion – about how the Wheah planned to make war on us all.'

  'Well,' she said. 'That was just for something to say. You know? That is the point of politics – just to have something to say.'

  But I refused to let go of the idea that Klabier had planted in my mind, back on that other world. The more I thought about it the more it made sense. The Wheah were planning to invade the fast space of the t'T. They had secretly sprung me from prison, and were now secretly employing me to commit my crime – as a means of distracting attention from their real purpose. They were about to emerge in a fleet of ships from the Tongue, and make war upon us. Why my AI refused to admit that this was the truth baffled me; I could not see why it served the Wheah's purpose to keep me in the dark about their plans – unless it was because they were afraid that, criminal though I was, I would rebel against my employment and warn the t'T if I knew the truth.

  In my more manic interludes I became fixated on this idea; that I might embark on a crusade to warn the whole population of the t'T about the coming invasion – that I would be their saviour, and would thereby make amends for my former crimes. I fantasised grand events, medal ceremonies.

  But in my saner moments I knew this was unrealistic of me. The very idea of 'mobilising' a population as individualistic and disparate as the t'T was absurd; I could say what I liked – could say indeed that I was being employed by the Wheah to commit mass murder – and people probably wouldn't listen to me. A few might, but most wouldn't. That was the nature of things in the t'T.

  'I suppose,' I whispered to my AI, one night whilst Klabier slept, her head upon my belly, 'I suppose that mass murder is one way of making the t'T sit up and pay attention.'

  Your latest theory? it replied. Have you abandoned the idea that the Wheah are behind everything, now?

  'Far from it,' I hissed. 'I'm closer to the truth than ever before.'

  Don't wait too long here, said the AI, close in my ear. You have a job to do. Wait too long and you'll be given back to the prison.

  I hear you, I hear you.

  5th

  Well, Stone,

  I was, to begin with, disappointed with the 'politics' groups of Nu Hirsch. It is true, there were a great many of such groups; and much of their discussion was given over to the Wheah. But there were as many theories as there were groups, and many of these theories were simply outlandish.

  Some said the Wheah were invading, and about to wage war. Others said that the Wheah wanted to become t'T; that they would come en masse as suppliants, leaving their space behind to enjoy the benefits of fast space and Utopian t'T living. Other still claimed that there were no Wheah, that it was part of a larger conspiracy – that the Wheah were alien xenoforms (absurd!), or a fiction invented by a group of t'T citizens for any number of strange reasons. A group at Nu Hirsch Capital, four hundred kilometres down the chain of mountains from Nu Hirsch Main, spent hours rolling the discussion round and round one single theory; that the Wheah were bent on mass suicide.

  'Mass suicide?' I blurted, furious. 'What idiocy!'

  But they were certain, this political group. Multicoloured faces stared at me with patience, and even pity. The Wheah were coming, they said, to travel to the Gravity Trench, the Great Trench that ran through the middle of t'T space. And why go there? Because they believed their fraction-God had told them to throw themselves in – that they would find religious enlightenment there.

  The strangest thing, dear stone; I stayed in that group for three days. Klabier got bored after an hour or two and went off swimming in the sea. But I became obsessed with persuading these people of the error of their ways. I had once met a Wheah, I told them, grandly (and so have we, they replied) – and your theory does not make sense. But the more I argued, the more I became uncertain of my position. They were so adamant, so sure of themselves. They quoted Wheah religious texts that I never knew existed; cited Wheah scholars by name that I had never heard of. Enlightenment was to be found at the bottom of the Gravity Trench, they believed; and it could only happen when the whole population threw themselves in. Fleet upon fleet of Wheah ships would emerge from the Tongue in the coming years, and all their travellers would foam-up and fly fast-space to the Trench.

  You will see, they said. Wait and see.

  I did not – quite – believe them; but those three days were enough to shake me out of my own certainty. Could that be the Wheah's plan? Mass suicide? There might be some way, some strange religio-logical relating to their bizarre fraction-God belief, that linked in mass murder with mass suicide.

  Is this true? I asked my AI. Are the Wheah planned to kill themselves on this scale?

  Why are you asking me? it replied. Do you assume that I know anything about the Wheah?

  It was always playing games with me.

  6th

  Dear Stone,

  My AI frequently threatened me with prison if I did not immediately leave Nu Hirsch and travel to Nu Fallow to carry out my work. But I reasoned that, having invested so much time and energy in freeing me from prison and after having directed me to the info-chip in the insect carapace, it was unlikely that they – whoever my employers were – would blithely allow me to be taken back to prison.

  'I'll go,' I said, 'when I know who my employers are.'

  I can't tell you that.

  'Then I shall find out for myself.'

  You'll find out after the job is done.

  We had this exchange many times.

  I did not allow myself to think, if I could help it, that maybe I did not want to commit the crime I had agreed to commit. This was a thought that came to me sometimes, and I struggled not to subvocalise it – if my AI overheard it, it might lose faith with me and I would immediately be given back to the 'police'. Of course I didn't want to go back to jail, dear stone; and I had killed before, so it wasn't the killing itself that bothered me. I am not sure what it was. Maybe it was the scale of the thing; but I'll be honest with you, my only confessor, and admit that I don't think it was that. No, I think it was simply the cussed-ness in my nature. I was told to do one thing, and therefore I did not want to do it. I had sold my soul, and if I could just find a way of cheating the bargain . . .

  There are grumblings, said the AI. I can't overhear every one of your thoughts, but sometimes I get a sense of things. A sort of distant hum in your brain, as you think with your non-vocal parts of mind. I know you're up to something.

  'Nothing at all,' I said. 'Not in the least.'

  At night, when Klabier was asleep, I would sometimes take out the tiny insect carapace and roll it between my fingers. I was curious to know what information it contained; why my AI had been so keen for me to retrieve it. I was curious to know what was going to happen next. I thought of having it analysed, of having its contents read by some processor or other, but I held back from this. No, ordered my AI. Don't do that! And on reflection it seemed to me likely that if I were to allow some t'T processor to analyse the thing it would be tantamount to alerting the police of my intentions. Bide your time, said my AI.

  7th

  Dear Stone,

  Klabier and I travelled along the coast of Continent Prime, one of the twelve continents on Nu Hirsch A. We went slowly, walking together, stopping each evening at one of the many beachside hostels.
The weather was good; on a regular, one-planet system it would have been too hot (for the sun was large and the planet close in), but the constant atmospheric turbulence caused by the gravity of Nu Hirsch E, the sister world visible in the sky at all times, blew up a constant cooling wind, and cloaked the sun in filters of white cloud. There were occasions, as the two of us walked arm in arm down the beach, when the sky would clear. Continent Prime was hemmed with a single, four thousand kilometre beach, the product of the fierce wave and tide action; and we spent a week simply walking along it, with the gnashing waves grinding against the shore to our right, and the land rising slowly to our left. And sometimes as we walked the endless, broad white sand beach, the clouds would clear from the sky and the heat would rise startlingly. Above would be an overarching vault of pure, pale green sky; the bright sun large above us; Nu Hirsch E as large again over towards the horizon. And the heat would fall heavily upon us, as if it had been waiting for this opportunity to pounce. It became uncomfortable very quickly; and we would take shelter in the shadow of a dune – even Klabier, who had the dotTech in her body to help regulate her body temperature. But such moments lasted only minutes. Usually a breeze would start up again, clouds would scurry up over the edge of the sea and slot in front of the sun, cool temperatures would reassert themselves.

  'What is it you want to know about the Wheah?' Klabier would ask me, and we wandered along.

  'My love?' I would say. Perhaps I was in a 'happy' mood, and minded to act-up the courtly rituals of love. Or I might simply grunt, if I were feeling low and didn't want to be engaged in conversation.