For how long? The hollow ringing fog in his mind gave forth no answers.
He concentrated on his face. He could feel it but not control it. Yet now a slackening came, a soft muzzy feel. He tried his lips. They wrinkled. He could not open his mouth. Yet. Next came his eyes. He lifted the right eyelid with an effort that felt like weight lifting. Light seeped in. His vision cleared. On to the left eye. Yes. The eyelid rose like a pink curtain.
Then he could see. The great slimy sphere hung in the air before him still. Moist rivulets slid around it. Roots and ropy vines of grimy green encased it, and somehow the whole thing pulsed, as if it were a vegetable heart. Feeder lines came from below and above the sweating thing.
What had happened to him? The fog he recalled could have lasted a long time. He turned his head with some effort and there was Viviane, also hanging in the zero-g moist air. There were fine, silvery filaments around her. Redwing looked to his feet and saw similar threads intersecting both legs. But as he watched, a rustle came through them, from the distant sphere. They popped off and snaked back toward their source.
The air thrummed with distant traffic, but here a solemn heavy silence prevailed. He managed to fan his legs and arms, slowly … and drifted toward Viviane. It took a while and he began to recall moments from the fog. Watery memories, slow and silent and slippery as silk. Images and scents flickering through consciousness: green onions frying in peppery oil, snapping snakes that slithered by him …
He pushed his palm against her and received a static charge for his trouble. It made his skin thrum.
He leaded forward to study her face. She seemed asleep. He launched a warm breath across her cheeks. Her eyes slid slightly open, and she whispered, “You want that kiss now?”
His heart leaped. He pressed his lips against hers lightly, and she had enough room to whisper, “Be vewwy, vewwy qwwiet…”
So she felt the lingering mind fog, too. They nuzzled and kissed and consoled each other, moments of pure delight, and that somehow drove away the fog’s last tendrils.
There was a drill for this, learned long before by both as part of deep space training: inbody inventory. All they had to do was signal their inboards for a full summary. In minutes it came. He didn’t believe it. Neither did she. So run them again. Same result. Bodies moderately, carefully improved: just a few organs, but including the skin. Liver spots gone. Carotid and femoral arteries reamed out with micro-tech. Membranes strengthened. Limbs looser, tendons tightened and shored up. Vision sharper. Pulse and vascular, both better. Amazingly, new body proportions. They were each taller. How?
Twisto swam into view. Redwing had forgotten him. Damn, how long was he out of it?
Twisto said, “I am happy to see you emerge from your rest.”
“Rest?!” Viviane shot back. “You knocked us out and—”
“I speak for the intelligence here”—an arm gestured at the Fungoid Sphere—“which used its talents to subsume your minds and bodies for an inspection.”
“It did plenty more than look,” Viviane said. “Dammit, I feel different, I had bad dreams, I hated it.”
“Your species use profanity to diffuse stress, we well fathom that. But now, after understanding you better, the agency I interpret for you wishes to move on to larger matters.”
“See if you can describe them,” Redwing said slowly, trying to read Twisto’s expression. Impossible; the alien face was, after all, a construct made to deal with humans, but without the nuances that permitted any easy analysis. The eyes and mouth worked with no more than the ability to convey simple meaning.
“It wishes to illuminate areas of Absolute Eternal Interest.”
Redwing could hear the ponderous capital letters. “Why?”
“You can be of help to us.”
“How?”
“That comes later. You must first know of the issues we confront.”
Viviane said, “Look, we came here to understand you, your worlds. Absolute Eternal Interests are above our pay grade.”
Twisto blinked, but that could mean anything. The wily aliens might be just taking in signals from the Fungoid Sphere and figuring out how to parse them into Anglish. They might be startled by the idea of a pay grade. Then Twisto said, “You will, of course, have talents you do not know. We shall proceed.”
Into his perception swam a vision of galaxies amid a cloak of dark cloud. He shook his head. How does the Fungoid do this?
Twisto said, “I will reprise some facts you know, to orient. You have encountered our transmitter, which distorts space-time. You correctly deduce that we use this channel to speak with distant minds that carry out large, powerful experiments in the fundamentals of our space-time.”
“Look,” Viviane said, “we came here to communicate and colonize, if you will be so kind. Not about physics and such, at least not right away.”
Redwing whispered to her, still in his embrace, “Let Twisto go on. It wants something from us.”
Twisto seemed to have ignored her, saying, “You have an incorrect view of such matters, though you do know we use the tiny yet vast masses you call black holes. You should know that your views of reality are mere passing notions.”
Redwing scowled skeptically.
“We now know that the gravitational field is a statistical concept like entropy or temperature, only defined for gravitational effects of matter in bulk and not for effects of individual elementary particles. So gravity is not a true fundamental force of nature but instead is a consequence of the universe striving to maximize entropy.”
Redwing let Viviane go. His mind was clearing. His breath sang in his nostrils. Twisto held steady, drifting by nearby, framed by the huge glistening sphere of the Fungoid. Strands of thin fiber hung in the air. Maybe that was how the Fungoid conveyed the images he saw superimposed on his view? Redwing said slowly, “We come to seek common ground, to learn. Your many species clearly do the same. As always, we should interrogate the world.… but…”
Twisto deftly spun head over heels and came up with his signature rictus smile. “Let me illuminate. Please. One broad main topic we discuss using such waves is technological crimes. Thus, if faster-than-light travel and communication are possibilities, they may need to be dealt with. Some worlds don’t take this seriously, and carry forward experiments that may threaten a breakout. This could overwhelm worlds which have no such abilities.”
Viviane said, “Isn’t that a chance any society faces? Getting overtaken?”
“True enough, though it does mean a few may harvest the kilonovas’ dense metal blowoffs. Those are epochal collisions of neutron stars, making a wealth of heavy elements. Ships casting great magnetic nets moving at 0.2 of lightspeed can rob whole regions of such riches, sending weaker and later societies into perpetual poverty.” Twisto said this with a matter-of-fact shrug, as if it were a routine maintenance problem. Maybe for the “Grav Wave Club,” it was.
“We also learn of curious phenomena beyond even our ken. The gravitational wave community cannot explain these. At times, planets display colorful auroras, attempting to attract a mate. These lure passing comets and asteroids. This implies some planetary-wide intelligence that can hail other such embedded minds, hearts calling out.”
Redwing doubted this like all hell. Maybe Twisto was sounding out their credulity?
“The ability to meddle with star output is common. Club members are continually on watch for abuse of such power—induced supernovas and the like.” Twisto held up a warning hand. “Mind you, though! The Bowl we judge to be too fragile to indulge in such star management. Though they are clearly doing that to their own star, they cannot venture near another.”
Viviane said sharply, “Why your animosity, then?”
“We were far smaller then. Not a grand species—yet. The Bowl approached for the first time. A huge thing brushing by us. We cowered, of course. They came. We fought. We resisted their extraction of our species—into their zoo!”
Redwing had read the many
ancient records—admittedly, written by Bowl historians—that told of the clashes here. They had not mentioned the Cobweb. Nor was there really much about the Glorians. But the Bowl wanted species from such a similar world to enrich its vast lands. Their biochemistry matched well, DNA and all. It seemed this sector of the galaxy, at least, had been brought to fruition by the same basic design of RNA and DNA. Some ancient panspermia, maybe, smatterings of life making their way from star to star on rocks. Even the myriad microbes matched, at the basic level. Maybe it was from some far-distant lifesite. No matter; the Bowl wanted all the variant forms it could muster from such similar planets. Intelligence was rare, but all the more valuable for it. A sudden thought—
“Is that why you built the Cobweb?” Redwing asked.
“It came as part of our dawning realization. We needed to be far stronger, smarter, and to have allies of great knowledge.” With this, Twisto lowered the thick nictitating membranes of his large eyes, as if to hide his feelings.
“Did that first Bowl visit prompt the Methaners to come here? Fleeing the Bowl?”
Twisto slid from their view, skating up high and turning in air to face the Fungoid Sphere—as if getting a message from it. Its arms danced in an elaborate gesture, far too fast and furious to decipher. Then Twisto turned and said, “You have delved deeper than you should. You are a swift species, true. But … the Methaners do not wish you to know their history.”
“So that’s a yes,” Viviane said.
Twisto came close to them, hovering a meter away. “This brings forth an issue essential to you. We—I—must confer with the Methaners.”
“Why?” Viviane asked.
“On whether they will gladly suffer your insolence, in coming here. Endangering their secrets, their security.”
“Or what?” Viviane pressed.
Twisto’s face rippled: a scowl. “Or whether their veto comes to bear. If so, you all die.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
A FURIOUS, FAST SPECIES
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
—KURT VONNEGUT, Hocus Pocus
Twisto had spent a long while staring into space. He was communing with something or somebody, arms slack, eyes rolled up. Looking dead, but not.
Redwing and Viviane hung in the zero-g vault, facing the Fungoid Sphere as it sweated under amber glows from distant walls. Time ticked on.
“Can we get away from this?” Viviane whispered.
Their suits were getting rank, and they badly needed downtime. Mostly sleep. He checked his suit log and found they had been unconscious for 6.43 hours. Yet he was tired.
But Redwing said, “This is crucial. With Beth’s team out of touch, I need to get this settled—or at least put on the back burner—and get back to SunSeeker.”
He realized he had been avoiding rethinking this little expedition. SunSeeker, yes. And Beth’s team. He had to get back and be the captain, not the explorer he wanted to be.
When the invitation came from whoever or whatever ruled this place, he had jumped at it. His trip down into the Cobweb had thrilled him. All these years of being crammed into the rattling metal box of SunSeeker had rankled him. So back aboard, he could not resist the chance to venture out into a wholly new entity—a living spaceship. Never would he have thought he would meet a smart slime mold with pretensions.
Twisto snapped back to attention, eyes open wide and arms jerking into a pose of alert poise. “To continue our conversation, yes. I was distracted by a discourse between our host”—a nod at the Fungal—“and the Methaners. There is some dispute afoot. But!” He jerked all along his body, as if being smoothed out by an unseen hand. “I was describing the issues contended by the gravitational community, strewn throughout this galaxy.”
“Far beyond our capabilities,” Viviane said.
“Quite so! But their interests do intersect yours, as shall become clear.”
Twisto rattled on, clearly channeling the Fungoid. “Some entities use teleportation to convey themselves. This remains a contended technology. A passenger disintegrates in a process that records the energy states of every subatomic particle. That information, sent to planets around other stars, then rebuilds the person.”
“But that’s—”
“Yes, to us it is murder with a promise of replacement with someone who thinks it is you.”
Viviane shot back, “But it isn’t. Identical twins don’t think they’re each other.”
Twisto waved this objection away. “Yet some entities consider this not murder but immortality. Hive minds and other collective intelligences feel the opposite.”
“I find that hard to imagine,” Redwing managed to say.
Twisto fanned four arms in a sort of dance and said, “You are primarily visual species, so perhaps this will show other concerns, leading to our issue.”
Into Redwing’s eyes sprang a vision. He watched a burning white dot, a white dwarf star, slamming into a yellow Sol-type star. The dwarf carved its way through, and the star flared into a thermonuclear furnace under the fierce compression of the dwarf’s added gravitation. The gnawing dwarf ate its way through the fatter star. It exploded into view on the other side, carrying forth like fruit of conquest a white-hot disk of incandescence, stolen from the Sol-star’s matter. An inhabited planet—How do I know this?—survived. But its atmosphere and then oceans boiled away within hours as the dwarf sped on, carrying its new disk like a brilliant skirt. Following it into the interstellar depths straggled the victim planet, borne into eternal chill.
“This is a war committed by one of the members of, as you say, the Grav Wave Club.”
“Good God,” Viviane said. “How can they…?”
“They are more grand than we, and certainly than you. Yet you have a commonality with them.”
Redwing had a thousand questions but stuck with “How old is this vision we’re getting?”
“Perspective is essential. The galaxy has rotated twenty-five times since your Earth was born, and nineteen since life appeared there, yielding you.” A studied shrug, as if this were a mere historical detail. “This species-slaughter we received news of a day ago.”
Redwing recalled a striking image he got from undergraduate biology. Consider the Earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard: the distance from the King’s nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history.
“Where was that?” Viviane asked.
“Where the oldest civilizations lie. In the great spherical star swarm, the great bulge that none of us in this outer stellar arm can even see through the intervening lanes of dust. They are closer to the galactic core. Stars formed in a wave out from that core, so the old civilizations are the inner ones. You and we are newer.”
“Do the new ones travel much?” Redwing asked.
“No. Most evolved intelligent societies soon see the huge cost of interstellar travel. They prefer to go inward. They explore the intricate ecologies of their own minds. Whole worlds give themselves over to life-as-computation. Thus they exit from the common discourse we enjoy through the Grav Wave Club.”
“How about really big ways to travel?” Redwing asked. He had wanted to answer these questions ever since sighting the Bowl of Heaven. Here was something that could answer. It was marvelous that the Twist creatures, obviously bio-constructed, were willing to talk now. Not earlier, when Beth asked them. Which meant that now was a more important time? A crucial one? It was an unsettling thought.
Twisto spun about his axis like a top, arms shooting out. “Few master whole stars, as you saw in the tragic war I showed you. Others such as your distant, evolved dinosaurs invented the Bowl to move among stars.”
“Is that common?” Viviane asked.
“There are a few others, but mostly on the other side of the galaxy. They are vastly ancient. The Bowl is, of course, important to us, for we see it as an immedi
ate threat. Our ancient term for it is the Malign.”
Viviane sniffed impatiently. “So not many people—okay, species—like us go star voyaging? In little ships, I mean.”
Twisto shook his head, vexed. “Just so. Many species believe in natural … theologies. They spend their energies to study the apparent fossil messages from the universal origin. These are embedded in the polarization of the microwave background radiation, stretched across the sky. They know the messages are incomplete because no one can see the entire sky—beyond what you humans call a Hubble time—the limit of where we can capture starlight—it is unseeable. Is it from a prior universe? Or from a Maker who wanted to say something to whatever intelligences arose in an experiment It was running? That answer they seek. They send endless expensive gravitational wave screeds upon this.”
Redwing wondered where the hell all this was going. It was like eavesdropping on Olympian gods gossiping.
“You developed your current anatomy scarcely a few hundred thousands of your years ago. The oldest figurine of a human is forty thousand years old. An earlier, quite serviceable model of your kind, which you term Neanderthal, went extinct about that time—a discarded model. Your modern behavior started then, burst forth, and now has engulfed your system solar within a few human lifetimes. It spreads to nearby stars such as ours in astonishing times. We took several millions of your years to do so.”
“So?”
“Our correspondents on the gravitational band are such primates.”
“You’re ‘corresponding’ with … humans?”
“No. Though aliens like you. Sapiens. Fast developers, hence unstable.”
“That’s unusual?”
Glorious--A Science Fiction Novel Page 35
