InterstellarNet 03 Enigma

by Edward M. Lerner

  Odd occurrences. An astronomical curiosity. Paleontological coincidence. Tanaka be damned, it meant something. Corinne had no idea what.

  She hoped the newly assertive Joshua would have a suggestion what to try next.

  CHAPTER 11

  Shrieking children clambered in the trees. An evening breeze soughed through the leaves of those trees. The setting sun, fat and red, hung low over the horizon.

  Squint, Joshua told himself, and this will all seem normal.

  With a crackle, as of twigs snapping, leaves rained down. Joshua picked one of the leaf clusters off the ground. Each leaf was an undulating tube, the color of a mallard’s head, softer and a bit thicker than a pine needle.

  From some branch high overhead, a baritone voice called out, “Sohr-ree.”

  And fair enough, that he(?) struggled to pronounce the word. The eight-limbed child swinging through the trees knew at least one more word of English than Joshua could speak of any Centaur language.

  Growing up, Joshua had had—back then, who hadn’t?—a four-eyed, green, furry, and eight-limbed toy teddypod. No more: teddypods had become politically incorrect.

  Even as he had slept hugging his teddypod, the first-ever Centaur starship had been well into its twenty-year unannounced journey to the star humans called Barnard’s. One needn’t be steeped in ICU lore—or Corinne’s friend—to know what had ensued. A renegade Snake clan exiled to the outermost fringes of the Barnard’s system captured Harmony, its Centaur crew still in suspended animation. Another twenty years traveling to Sol system, where Snakes presented their prize as the Snake starship Victorious, in a scheme to obtain the secrets of human antimatter production.

  Trickery and subterfuge and battle, and the destruction of both humanity’s sole antimatter factory and Harmony/Victorious. The Snake survivors settled into a new exile, this time on the remote Uranian moon Ariel. Thirteen years for humans to stockpile more antimatter and build a starship based upon Centaur technology. New Beginnings, with its mixed human/Centaur crew, now halfway through its fourteen-year epic flight to Alpha Centauri. The Centaur colony established on Earth for those too old or too traumatized to undertake yet another marathon voyage—even to return home.

  And now, in a remote corner of the Outback, Joshua marveled: I’m going to meet the elders of that Centaur colony. If all went well, that was. It was about time that something did.

  Harmony’s evacuees had rescued a few seeds and small animals. They now had this otherworldly grove to show for it.

  Joshua sat on the leaf-strewn ground, leaning against the barkless bole of a sort-of-tree/sort-of-needle-free-cactus. The trunk yielded beneath his weight like a soggy carpet roll. A good twenty-five meters away, Corinne stood talking with two adult Centaurs. They towered over her. More Centaurs walked about, their many-limbed perambulations a wonder to behold. Tree-swinging, even for the gleefully shouting young ones, was a sometime thing.

  Ping! “Okay,” Corinne spoke into Joshua’s mind’s ear. “They’ve agreed to talk with you.”

  • • • •

  Five people occupied the small forest glade: two humans, two Centaurs, and an AI avatar manifested in holo form. Corinne knew everyone, and she made the introductions. “Joshua Matthews. Tacitus 352. K’tra Ko ka. T’Gwat Fru.” The comm console that projected Tacitus also linked in a translator AI for the Centaurs.

  K’tra Ko ka stiffly circled the clearing, dignified despite her advanced years. Age-faded fur only hinted at the teal-and-jade stripes Corinne so vividly remembered. “To be ka is an obligation,” Ko explained, “more than a title. In a crisis, my judgment must substitute for consensus.” A wave rippled from her almost-shoulders to the tips of her tentacles and reflected back: ironic laughter. “I hope never to experience another emergency.”

  Is this an emergency? Corinne wondered. Joshua had yet to reveal, beyond his desire to consult with Centaurs, why he had brought them to Australia. Until their landing in Perth, Joshua had let her think he was only putting distance between them and his stalkers.

  T’Gwat Fru, the closest among the exiles to a Centaur historian, likewise circled the clearing. Corinne guessed the Centaurs were not as much pacing as keeping their old joints from seizing up. Fru was the taller of the aliens, a head taller even than Joshua. Scattered bold emerald streaks still highlighted his fur.

  “Ka,” Joshua began formally. “Thank you for seeing us.”

  “Just Ko,” she said, her voice a deep bass. “And Fru for my colleague.”

  “Ko and Fru.” Joshua gave up trying to maintain eye contact as the Centaurs circled in opposite directions. “I’m struggling to find a way to present this. For anything even half this complex, I am accustomed to using implants.”

  “We don’t use neural implants.” Ko kept circling. “We know most humans do, and those you call Snakes, and several other InterstellarNet species. It’s just not attractive to us.”

  “Project what you need,” Corinne netted Joshua. She held back a grin at his response: a Centaur laugh gesture superimposed onto his avatar’s boneless shrug.

  “Ko and Fru,” Joshua began again. “It appears that we live in a very special corner of the galaxy.” With admirable brevity and a few holographic projections, he explained all that troubled him. The Matthews conundrum. The Cambrian coincidence. Technologies uncannily synchronized across all the InterstellarNet species.

  “Not identical, of course,” Tacitus said. He interspersed comments without, Corinne thought, adding much. To be fair, he had first spotted the Cambrian coincidence. “There would not be trade otherwise.”

  No one spoke for a long time. Fru stopped walking, the better, it seemed, to poke and prod at the comp he had unhooked from his utility belt. “I cannot disagree,” he finally said. If the translator had correctly applied inflection, Fru was unhappy. “Your facts appear correct.”

  “Can you add anything?” Corinne had no more reason than Joshua to expect the Centaurs would have insights to offer—just the desperate hope Joshua must feel.

  “Details,” Fru answered. “On Haven”—the Centaur home world—“the equivalent to your Cambrian Explosion proceeded a little faster. Life in Haven’s oceans had evolved a bit further.” He resumed his circling, but slowly, still manipulating his comp. “Of course, Haven is an older world. You would expect that.”

  Tacitus cleared his virtual throat. “Alpha Centauri is not much older than Sol. Tau Ceti is twice Sol’s age, and Barnard’s Star yet older. Epsilon Eridani is far younger. Microfossils show, or so we’ve been told, life emerging on every InterstellarNet home world within a few hundred million years of its formation. Then, suddenly—half a billion years ago—synchronization. Across eleven neighboring solar systems.”

  Asteroid impacts. Rampant volcanism. The onset or end of glaciations. Theories for epochal changes abounded—while hard evidence remained elusive at best. “Separate catastrophes, light-years apart, all at around the same time.” Corinne shivered. “Somehow, it’s why we’re all here now.”

  • • • •

  Joshua sat on rocky ground, lobbing twigs into a small campfire. Its dancing flames were mesmerizing. The almost trees rustled in the breeze. Creatures unseen twittered and chirped in the underbrush.

  He tried, and failed, to empty his mind, the thoughts and memories of this evening all too painful. Mysterious enemies. Prehistorical enigmas. A proud family legacy reduced to infosphere punch line.

  What had he expected to find here? He had no clue. Something. Anything. It was so much wishful thinking.

  Joshua leaned to gather a fresh handful of twigs. The night grew cold, and he didn’t feel like going indoors. The smoke smelled of vanilla and dill.

  InterstellarNet meant AI trade agents. An AI trade agent scoured its host society’s infosphere and transmitted its findings home. Tacitus had already data-mined everything humanity’s agents could find or buy about those other civilizations. He had found the Cambrian coincidence in the first place.

 
AIs can’t know everything, Joshua told himself. Himself was unimpressed. They still knew more than he did, or ever could. Should he now add jealousy to his list of failings?

  Model trains. More specifically, Dad’s model train. Joshua poked the campfire with a stick, bemused by this latest synapse misfire.

  Pop! A sap bubble exploded and Joshua twitched. Maybe there was no more to this trip than flight from his near-abduction. “Research” sounded better than fleeing. Maybe, at some level, he meant to hide where any human’s arrival elicited comment. He tossed in another handful of twigs, and the scent of dill intensified.

  Joshua stood, stretched, and kicked dirt over the campfire until, in a shower of sparks, the last flicker of flame went out. Cool lights and Corinne’s easy laughter indicated the way to company. He walked in the opposite direction.

  More and more stars twinkled overhead, Alpha Centauri among the brightest, as his eyes acclimated to the dark. The Moon shone above and sparkled in the nearby creek. He, in any event, considered it a creek; the map he had consulted on the flight here had called it a river. He didn’t remember the river’s name. He could have looked it up but didn’t bother; net surfing had no part in his program of mind-emptying. Surely he could manage one evening without using his implant. The Centaurs spent their lives that way.

  Suddenly curious why, Joshua turned toward the sound of Corinne’s voice.

  He found her in a far older wood, this one terrestrial, hugging the banks of the creek. Oh yeah, the Katherine River. She stood chatting with Fru and two Centaurs whom Joshua had yet to meet. Fru still towered over her. The strangers, though, were eye to eye with Corinne—because both hung upside down from an ancient boab tree. Their orientation didn’t seem to phase her.

  “Fru,” Joshua said, “why don’t Centaurs use neural implants?”

  “I’m not sure,” Fru answered. The three Centaurs consulted in bass rumbles. “Having thoughts put straight into one’s head—it’s too much like telepathy.”

  Corinne looked as puzzled as Joshua felt. “Would telepathy be a bad thing?”

  “An eerie thing,” one of the other Centaurs said. “Nepathian.”

  “That didn’t translate,” Corinne said.

  “Nepathian,” Fru repeated. “Nepath is a proper name. A character in an old story. Very influential.”

  Joshua leaned forward. “What’s it about?”

  More bass rumblings. “A mad-scientist story from the dawn of our scientific revolution. Close to four hundred Earth years ago. The ‘science’ was ludicrous, of course, but Nepath invented helmets that enabled mind reading. He promised telepathy would banish all misunderstanding. Instead, the helmets spread envy and distrust. Unfiltered emotion tore at the fabric of society.”

  Corinne laughed. “And a thousand angry villagers with torches and pitchforks attacked his castle.”

  Joshua had had the same thought. “It does sound like Frankenstein, doesn’t it?”

  “Frankenstein?” Fru blinked. Among Centaurs, blinking also denoted surprise, but they did it using only their inner eyelids. “That didn’t translate for us.”

  “A mad-scientist story of Earth’s,” Corinne said. “As it happens, written around the same time. Frankenstein sought to create life. He assembled a creature from parts of stolen corpses, and then reanimated the creature with lightning.”

  All three Centaurs now blinked. “That truly is a coincidence,” Fru said. “We have that old story, too.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Not-quite-trees and the gentle green octopods who glided among them were the main evidence of an extraterrestrial presence. The few Centaur structures were gracefully curved and low to the ground, melding with the arid plains and native red-rock formations. It was all quite eco-friendly. Very subdued and understated.

  Then there was indoors.

  The colony’s surface constructions were mostly antechambers to long tunnels, multitiered basements, and expansive caves. The heart of the community was a twenty-meter-high artificial cavern, its atrium bathed in sunlight.

  Corinne supposed the enormous dome was a plasteel skylight, its exterior surface treated to mimic the sun-parched terrain. But maybe only a very large digital replica of a sunny sky hugged a rocky cavern ceiling. She was not about to climb up to investigate.

  On the Commons floor, in no pattern she could discern, consorted: manicured gardens; clusters of round tables and backless stools in a riot of bold colors; hypnotic water sprays, part sprinkler and part dynamic sculpture; meandering graveled pedestrian paths; holo exhibits; decorative boulders; food synthesizers; and apparatuses to which Corinne could put no label. Three tiers of rails for swinging ringed the stone walls. Hooks for swinging dotted the ceiling and its few slender support columns. Singly and in groups, Centaurs threaded the cluttered floor and swung through the vast enclosed space. For the latter set, a few swoops of rope were the closest thing to a safety net.

  Sighing, Corinne looked away. Again. The meeting grotto shared a clear wall with the Commons whose throngs kept catching her eye. Across the table, his back to the glass, Joshua helped Fru fiddle with a projected data graphic. Their unending tweaking made her nervous as hell.

  Her nerves weren’t entirely their fault. She had slept poorly the night before. It wasn’t the usual Harmony/Victorious nightmare, in any of its variations, that kept her tossing and turning. She had survived that ordeal, and her subconscious knew it. Failure scared her more than danger. Fear of ridicule frightened her most of all.

  Adrenaline and stims would substitute for lack of sleep, and she had taken plenty of stims. Nothing could make up for a loss of nerve.

  Dr. Robyn Tanaka Astor and two aides must have come straight from Perth Spaceport to the Centaur colony, because suddenly, a good two hours earlier than Corinne had expected, Ko was escorting them through the Commons. Approaching the meeting grotto, Tanaka’s aides started. The S-G’s face remained impassive. Of course.

  Ko and Fru began briefing the newcomers.

  A mind’s ear ping announced an incoming call: Tanaka Astor. In Corinne’s mind’s eye, a featureless sphere spun. Or did it spin? If it’s featureless, how could she gauge spinning? Never mind! Focus! Joshua’s avatar joined in an instant later.

  Tanaka Astor netted, “K’tra Ko ka asked ur here to meet with a Centaur delegation. Ir did not expect to meet humans here.”

  You did not expect to see Joshua and me, Corinne translated. There was nothing to be gained by commenting.

  That didn’t stop Joshua. “My apologies if you feel misled, Madame Secretary-General. I’ve been consulting with the Centaurs.”

  “You should not have bothered the colonists. It is not helpful,” the S-G netted. At the same time she conversed the old-fashioned way with the Centaurs.

  Corinne had only the one mind. She couldn’t process simultaneous conversations in real and cyberspace. Maybe that was Tanaka Astor’s plan: keeping Joshua and her from the audible conversation.

  The hell with that. Corinne dropped the net link.

  Oblivious to the netted dialogue, Fru was wrapping up his summation. He, Joshua, and Tacitus had found several disturbing synchronizations between Earth and Haven history.

  “Interesting coincidences, perhaps, but over a time span of eons,” Tanaka Astor said. Joshua’s red face suggested a second, more dismissive critique. “Ir do not see the urgency the ka indicated in requesting this gathering.”

  Once, Corinne thought, I was a reporter. I uncovered news. I helped set the public agenda. Then fame went to my head. I turned into a journalist, more apt to present how I found or felt about a story than the story itself. And now, nearing bottom, I’m a celebrity. Now it’s all about me. It’s become an endless rehash of things I’ve already done.

  But the ladder had a final lower rung. Buffoon. It terrified Corinne. Am I seriously considering this? Challenging one of the most powerful figures in the Solar System?

  “How do you explain two all but identical Frankenstein stories appear
ing on both worlds at almost the same time?” Joshua demanded.

  “Ir don’t explain it,” Tanaka Astor said expressionlessly. “Nor do you. Neither humans nor Centaurs had radio, so you can’t explain it.”

  “It needs explaining,” Joshua insisted. “There are too many coincidences. Here’s another. Both worlds share the RUR story.”

  (RUR? Joshua must not have slept last night, either. Corinne queried. Rossum’s Universal Robots. R.U.R., like Frankenstein, was a cautionary tale, this time with rebellious automatons exterminating their creators. Earth’s version appeared in 1921, the Centaur equivalent ten years earlier. Humans and Centaurs had had radio by then, but very primitive and low-power. Neither could yet receive transmissions from the other.)

  Tanaka Astor stood to leave. “With all due respect, ka, Dr. Matthews would exploit you to rehabilitate himself. He raises endless questions but offers not a single answer.”

  Corinne’s thoughts raced. She had lain low since the ICU contingent arrived. Her presence remained plausibly in the service of newsgathering. Reporter, journalist, celebrity. She did not want to take the final step down. And yet, there were worse fates than being laughed at. Joshua had survived ridicule, still holding his head high. Abandon a friend over a little embarrassment? She had not yet sunk so low.

  Nor would she.

  What might give Tanaka Astor second thoughts? Not appeals to loyalty and trust. Those might be as foreign to an Augmented as amusement and jealousy, contentment and despair. How about the prospect of time lost to handling foolish human manias? A new popular obsession was something PR could achieve. Something Corinne could invoke.

  Corinne cleared her throat. “Madame Secretary-General, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss these parallels. In fact, I expect my viewers will find them most intriguing. Joshua, would you show the matrix?”

  The S-G made no further move to leave.

  Good enough, Corinne thought. I’ll take even small victories.

  Joshua coaxed a complex graphic from the unfamiliar Centaur projector. “The Frankenstein coincidence suggested a plan of study. R.U.R. confirmed it.” He pointed into the holo. “InterstellarNet has several more fascinating literary coincidences. They’ve had similar consequences.