Prev Next

EIGHT

Through the cold mountain night Quath felt a massive presence descending.

She had taken shelter in a fissure beyond where the Noughts lurked. From this vantage she could pick up their effusions and leakage radiation. They plainly thought their small bubbles of electric perception, damped to the minimum, could elude the podia. Quath penetrated the tiny, wan spheres with ease, inspecting the fitful firefly radiances that simmered there.

But she could extract little of use to her this way. Certainly she learned nothing that went beyond her scorching revelations while actually encased in the Nought. Rivulets of Nought thought slipped through the chilly air and snagged in Quath’s electro-aura, flapping like tiny flags in the perception-breeze. And the telltale she had planted on her Nought was silent.

Still she was reluctant to approach the mountaintop. Another incident might alert them fully, scattering them and making Quath’s quest harder.

Then she had felt the first high, tenuous note sounding down from far to the west. The high treble skated on the air, pursued by booming bass notes. They rolled like steady thunder. The source came down and forward at a speed that Quath thought at first must be an illusion. Stuttered Doppler images came too fast for her. Old fears welled up.

The podia had come from ground-grubbing origins. Heights brought acute, squeezing panic to them. That was why they did not hunt for enemies from the air, no matter how efficient such searching could be. It had taken millennia for the podia to be able to tolerate the keening sense of falling that came in orbit. Only genetic alterations had made space travel possible for them… though it did not erase the persistent terror that flight over the nearby landscape brought, with its gripping images of precipitous possible falls. Quath and the others managed to loft for short distances only by turning control over to a submind, reducing the task to distant mechanical motions.

But this thing!—it plunged as though oblivious to the ram pressure of air. A ship?

No—the dark line spanned a quadrant of the sky. A falling chunk of the podia’s construction? Impossible—its browns and greens were unlike the enormous gray labyrinths they built.

Down it came. Quath broke her aura-silence and called to the Tukar’ramin.

The swelling intelligence came at once, flickering in the crisp air.

*I understand your panic. Had I not been concerned with more grave and pressing matters, I would have warned you.*

<Will it fall on me?> Quath asked, trying to seem composed.

*No. It will not touch the ground at all.*

<Mechwork? Is it mechwork? I shall shoot it—>

*Attempt no such foolishness. Here.*

In Quath’s aura burst a flowering electrical kernel of knowledge, fat and sputtering. Data impacted, data rampant.

She swallowed it, converting the spinning ball of inductive currents into readable hormones. Scents and aromas bloomed, packed with stunning detail.

*It comes unfiltered from the Illuminates.*

The honor of receiving such a holy kernel stunned Quath. She tentatively tasted. An astonishing central fact swept over her like an icy stream: The thing above was alive.

Its history had been buried in a musty vault of supposedly minor knowledge, Quath was shocked to find. Certainly none of the podia had spoken much of this thing. Yet, as she unpeeled the layers of hormonal implications, the crux became ever more impressive.

<Why were we not told this?> Quath cried, as the history of the thing poured through her, her subminds dissecting the myriad nuances.

*We did not consider it vital,* the Tukar’ramin replied. *It is a curious object, granted. It may be of use to us in the future.*

<Of use—!> Quath felt dismayed shock at the Tukar’ramin’s bland unconcern. Then her characterological submind took hold and reminded her that she was, after all, only a recently augmented member of the Hive. Her great advancement, the revelations about her Philosoph components—these still did not mean she could blithely question the Tukar’ramin’s judgment. She savored the strangely cool presence—the very voice of the Illuminates.

Above, the thing came down through thunderclaps and vortex night.

It had started as a seedbeast, far out at the rim of this solar system.

It was then a thin bar of slow life struggling in bitter cold. Threads trailed from it, holding a gossamer mirror far larger than the bar. Wan sunlight reflected from the mica mirror, focusing on the living nucleus, warming it enough to keep a tepid, persistent flow of fluids.

In hovering dark far beyond the target star the bar waited and watched. Passing molecular clouds brushed it with dust, and this grimy meal was enough—barely—to help repair the occasional damage from cosmic rays.

Filigrees of muscle fiber kept its mirror aligned and formed the rigging for later growth. Even so far from the star, sunlight’s pressure inflated the large but flimsy structure. A slight spin supplied aligning tension, through crisscrossing spars.

The wan but focused starlight fell upon photoreceptors, which converted the energy into chemical forms. The seed-beast did not need to move quickly, so this feeble flow of power was enough to send it on its hunt.

No mind sailed in this bitterly cold, black chunk. None was needed… yet.

The filmy mirror played another role. As the bed of photoreceptors grew through the decades, the image formed by the mirror broadened. Occasionally contractile fibers twitched. Weightless, the mirror canted to the side and curved into an artfully skewed paraboloid. Slow oscillations marched across the field of sewn mica. Leisurely, undulating images of the star rippled away to the edges, sending long waves through the rigging. The shimmering surfaces cupped dim radiance, compressed it. Momentarily this gave the receptors a sweeping image of the space near the approaching sun.

For a very long time there was little of note in the expanded image—only the background mottling and lazy luminescent splashes in the molecular clouds. Against this wash of light the prey of the seedbeast would be pale indeed.

But at least the beast found a suspect pinprick of light. Was it a ball of ice? Ancient instincts came sluggishly into play.

Specialized photoreceptors grew, able to analyze narrow slivers of the spectrum that came from the far, dim dot. One sensed the ionized fragments of hydrogen and oxygen. Another patrolled the thicket of spectral spikes, searching for carbon dioxide, ammonia, traces of even more complex though fragile forms.

Success would not come on the first try, nor even on the tenth. Not only did the seedbeast demand of the distant prey a filmy, evaporating hint of ices; the precometary head had to move in an orbit which the seedbeast could reach.

At last one target daub of light fulfilled all the ancient genetically programmed demands, and the seedbeast set forth. A long stern chase began. Celestial mechanics, ballistics, decision-making—all these complex interactions occurred at the gravid pace allowed by sunlight’s constant pressure. Great sails grew and unfurled from the beast. Snagging the photon wind, the thing tacked and warped.

Centuries passed. The tiny image of the prey waxed and waned as the elliptical pursuit followed the smooth demands of gravity. The prey swelled ahead, became a tumbling, irregular chunk of dust and ice.

Now came a critical juncture: contact. Data accumulated in cells and fibers designed for just this one special task. Angular momentum, torques, vectors—all abstractions reduced finally to molecular templates, groupings of ions and membranes. Achingly slow, the beast made calculations that are second nature to any being which negotiates movement. But it could expend its limitless time to minimize even the most tiny of risks.

Slender fibers extended. They found purchase on the slowly revolving ice mountain, each grappler seizing its chosen point at the same moment. The beast swung into a gravid gavotte, spooling out stays and guy threads. The slight centripetal acceleration activated long-dormant chemical and biological processes.

Something akin to hunger stirred in the cold bar.

Its sail, mirrored by countless mica-thin cells, reflected the distant star’s glow onto the prey. This patient lance of sunlight blew away a fog of sublimed ice. The beast tugged at its shrouds to avoid being thrust askew by the gas, but kept the precise focus.

A shaft deepened. At random spots inside, residual radioactivity had melted the water ice, forming small pockets of liquid. The seedbeast extended down a hollow tendril.

The first suck of delicious liquid into the reed-thin stalk brought to the seedbeast a heady joy—if a conglomerate of reproducing but insensate cells can know so complex a response.

More tendrils bridged the gap. They moored the beast to the iceball and provided ribbed support for further growth of the sail. The glinting, silvery foil sent lancing sunlight into the bore-hole, exploding the chemical wealth into fog.

Food! Riches! Many centuries of waiting were rewarded.

Thin, transparent films captured the billowing gas. Eager cells absorbed it. Nutrients flowed out to the seedbeast’s core body. Spring came after a winter unimaginably long.

Finally the conical hole was deep enough into the ice to ensure protection from meteorites and even most cosmic rays. The bar tugged at new contractile fibers. Its nest was safely bored. Gingerly, it migrated. Care informed every move. Painfully tentative tugs at its contractile strands brought the dense, dark axial bar safely down into the pit. Here it would reside forever.

The descent of the central axis, now swelling enormously, inaugurated fresh responses. The beast grew crusty nodules that sprouted into pale, slender roots. Deep molecular configurations came into play. Though it had nothing resembling true intention, the beast began preparing for its next great adventure: the fall sunward.

No intelligence guided it yet. The rough bark and dark browns of the body sheltered complex genetic blueprints, but no mind.

Roots poked and pried through the ice. Complex membranes wriggled, the waste heat of their exploring melting a path. Then they sucked out the thin liquid—building more tissue, forcing open crevices. A fraction of the slow wealth worked back to the central body, where more minute blueprints unrolled in their molecular majesty.

Mining roots sought rare elements to build more complex structures. Ever-larger sails grew. The iceball that might have become a mere comet felt patient, cautious probings. The beast could take unhurried care, lest it find some unexpected danger.

Fans of emerald green crept over the grimy surface ice. In a century the tumbling ice mountain resembled a barnacled ship, overgrown with mottled, crusty plants that knew no constraint of gravity. Sap flowed easily in wide cellulose channels. Contractions brought warming fluid to stalks that fell into shadow.

This spreading, leathery forest occasionally heaved and rocked with sluggish energy. It extended great trunks high into the blackness above. Trees of thick brown butted against one another in competition for the sun. Leaves sprouted, wrinkled and lime green.

Only the ever-swelling sails could stop the woody spears’ outward thrust. When a trunk shadowed the sails, a signal worked its way down through the tendrils. In the offending tree sap ebbed, growth stopped.

The trunks were not simply made. Inside the ice, mining roots sought lodes of carbon. Though the plants above displayed impossibly ornate convolutions and flowerings, this was a minor curlicue compared with the sophisticated complexity that went on at the molecular level of the mining roots.

They harvested carbon atoms and towed them into exact alignment, forming its crystal: graphite. Slight imperfections in the match were negotiated by a jostling crowd of donor or acceptor molecules. Great graphite fibers grew with cautious deliberation, flawlessly smooth.

Countless other laboring molecules ferried the graphite strands beneath the tree bark. Years passed as they merged, providing structural support far beyond what the gravity-free plant needed. The fibers waited in reserve, for the overgrown ice world was steadily swinging inward, toward the sun.

By now the forest had swelled to many times the size of the parent iceball. The star ahead was no longer merely a fierce point of light. Millennia of tacking in the soft breath of photons had brought the comet-beast within range of the planets.

The pace quickened aboard. Small, spindly creatures appeared, concocted from freshly activated genetic blueprints. They scampered among the foliage, performing myriad tasks of construction and repair.

Some resembled vacuumproof spiders, clambering across great leathery leaves with sticky-padded feet. They could find errors in growth, or damage from piercing meteoroids, beneath the pale light of the distant sun. Following instructions carried in only a few thousand cells, these black-carapaced beasts poked thin fingers into problems.

If a puzzle arose beyond their intricately programmed routines, they found the nearest of the coppery seams that laced around the great trunks. These were superconducting threads. Making contact, the spiders could communicate crudely but without signal loss to the core-beast.

Electrical energy also flowed through the threads steadily, charging the spiders’ internal capacitors and batteries. Though biologically hardwired for their tasks, the spiders could receive and store more complex instructions for temporary problems. The greater core-beast was simply a larger example of such methods; complex and resourceful, it was nonetheless not yet an autonomous intelligence.

The moment came for more powerful maneuvers. This registered in the core-beast and brought forth a response that a witness might have found to be evidence of high originality. Silicates began to collect on the one surface spot left bare by the plants. Spiders and crusty fungus together fashioned ceramic nozzles and tanks, linked by clay-lined tubing. Carefully hoarded oxygen and hydrogen combined in the combustion chamber. An electrolytic spark began a steady contained explosion. The comet-beast moved sunward again.

Still, its destination was not the fiery inner realm. Its hoard of ice would have sublimed there, disemboweling the beast. The sun could never be a close friend.

Instead, it followed a gradual inward spiral. In time the heat generated in the crude rocket engine threatened to warm the comet too much. When melting began, the beast switched to smaller pulpy bulbs, grown like parasitic sacs far up the towering trees. These combined hydrogen peroxide and the enzyme catalase, venting their caustic steam safely away from the precious ice reserve.

It pursued a particularly rich asteroid which the solar mirrors had picked out. Cellulose bags grew near the photoreceptors and filled with water. These thick lenses gave sharp images which the comet-beast used to dock itself adroitly alongside its newest prey.

Breaking up the tumbling, carbon-rich mountain took more than a century of unflagging labor. Larger spiders came forth, summoned by deeper instructions. They ripped minerals from the asteroid with jackhammer ferocity. Crawling mites urged on the slow, steady manufacture of immense graphite threads.

From silvery silicates the myriad spider swarms made a reflecting screen. Swung on contractile fibers, this fended off the occasional solar storms of high-energy protons that came sleeting into the comet-forest. The beast continued to spiral inward. Protecting the more delicate growths and preventing ice losses became its primary concern.

The beast grew now by combination. Graphite threads entwined with living tissue along a single axis. What had begun as a thin bar now replicated that form on a huge scale.

The skinny, iron-gray thing grew slowly as meticulous spiders helped the weaving. Gradually the asteroid dwindled. The bar became immense. It was thickest at its middle, where the core-beast now lived inside. Even cosmic rays could not reach through the protective ice and iron to damage the genetic master code.

Then chemical vapors poured again from low-thrust ceramic chambers. And a new trick was turned: electromagnetic drive. Induction coils surged with currents, propelling iron slugs out through a barrel. This mass-driver shed matter that the beast did not need, banging away like a sluggish machine gun.

The assembly began another voyage, this one much less costly in energy. Still, it needed many orbits to complete the efficient loop to the next asteroid.

Centuries passed as the ever-lengthening bar consumed more of the stony little worlds. Solar furnaces made of the silvery reflecting films smelted, alloyed, and vacuum-formed exotic, strong girders for the bar. But the central art was the incessant spooling out of graphite threads to join those already lying along the great bar.

Many thousands of years passed before the final stage in the great beast’s growth to maturity began. The last, most complex gene sites deep within the original biological substrate began to replicate themselves.

Intelligence is, finally, in the eye of the beholder. The actions which followed would have seemed to observers to be obvious evidence of problem-solving and creativity on a scale, and at such speed, as to completely prove the guidance of a considerable mind.

Perhaps the cells that directed the vast bar-beast still farther sunward were, by now, a mind. Here distinctions turn on definitions, not data.

The beast had decided on its final destination long before: a planet with abundant liquid water.

The beast was immensely long by now, grown to a third of the target planet’s radius. To the eye of an inhabitant of the planet, though, it was very nearly invisible—because the vast brown-black construction was only slightly thicker than the original comet-beast. Indeed, a dab of ice still clung to the exact center of the immense cable. Caution dictated that the beast always have a reserve.

Still, as the planet swelled from a dot to a disk, more mirrors deployed behind it—a precaution against defense by possible inhabitants. None rose to meet the beast. Mechs had not yet come to the world, and the lesser life which dwelled there probably did not give even passing attention to the slim, dark line in the night sky.

Still, a few small asteroids did pass momentarily across the face of the planet. Ever cautious, the beast focused its great mirrors. The offending motes fused into slag.

The beast always erred on the side of prudence. Still, its greatest risk now yawned.

With grave deliberation, mass-drivers began to fire all along its length. They slowly flung away the last reserves of useless slag, subtracting orbital angular momentum. This planet did not have a moon, so the beast could not undergo repeated flyby encounters to lose its momentum. Instead, decades of careful navigation brought it closer to the world.

The grand moment came at last. The nub end of the bar-beast swept up the first atoms of the atmosphere. This sent complex signals through the superconducting threads that wrapped the bar. Something like elation triggered more rapid molecular transitions.

It tasted the tenuous air. This was wealth of a new sort: mild gases, water vapor, ozone. Especially broad leaves captured minute amounts and pooled them in great veins. Samples reached the core-beast and were judged good.

The land below lay ripe with life. This was the longordained paradise the beast sought. Now it began on the full task of its maturity.

The great bar began to spin.

*As you witness,* the Tukar’ramin interrupted Quath’s meditation, *the Illuminates know much of such objects.*

Quath had absorbed the yawning history of the beast in a glimmering fragment of a moment, faster than an eyeblink. The massive thing still plunged down the sky, framed against the glow of the revolving Cosmic Circle.

*No, the Circle orbits much farther out. Your signal carries overcurrents of alarm, Quath. Why?*

*Fear?*

<It… it is huge. Yet living! To fly so…>

*Do not concern yourself. This object was here when we came. The mechs had made no use of this odd, rotating thing. Perhaps they did not realize that it is alive—else they would have killed it.*

*This self-replicating form spreads naturally among the stars of Galactic Center. We do not know its origins.*

*None that we can see. What does brute life know of purpose, Quath?*

*This presumably does so. They have been seen near other planets. We have not taken the time to study them in detail.*

*Surely you err.* The Tukar’ramin’s tone was suddenly cool.

Quath said diplomatically, <I meant, other than yourself.>

*Do not neglect the Illuminates,* the Tukar’ramin said formally.

<No, of course not. But still…>

Their conversation had proceeded through several microseconds as Quath peered upward in awe. <It is… wonderful.>

*Not at all,* the Tukar’ramin said condescendingly. *Such structures are a minor element in the greater equation of this world. I have news for you—*

<No! You see only size in this thing. I see… majesty.>

A torrent of emotion burst upon Quath. The terror and wonder she had felt so much lately now swelled to become a toppling wave, drowning her in sudden, wrenching currents. She felt, at last, what separated her from all the rest of the podia. Awe—simple and yet unendurably vast. It swept through her, cleansing and divine.

*Come, Quath, pay attention. There is grave, deep division between the Illuminates. Some Illuminates have seized podia here.*

<Seized? But so august a presence would merely need to make its will known, and any of the podia would gladly kneel in abject gratitude, to serve.> Quath repeated this timeworn homily while her overmind swirled with smoldering, long-suppressed impulses.

The Tukar’ramin’s acousto-magnetic profile took on tints and flavors Quath had never felt before. *There is holy conflict. Even the Illuminates are divided, and struggle against one another.*

Mordant hues conveyed the gravity of this revelation. <And they… war?>

*I do not understand what is happening. Some of the podia of our own Hive do not respond to my commands. They are carrying out purposes I do not know.*

Quath said sharply, <To what end?>

*Some of the Illuminates feel we should not pursue this aim, should not venture toward Galactic Center as yet. Certainly, they say, we should not do so using the unreliable knowledge gained from a lowly Nought craft.*

*Yes, I gather so.* Sadness and disbelief resonated through the Tukar’ramin’s rich spectrum.

<Who? Where?>

*Many, and everywhere.*

<Here? I am about to capture the Nought we seek, if I can merely sort it out from the swarms of them nearby. Give me time—>

*That we do not have. Find it! But beware others of your Hive—they act now for agencies I do not fathom.*

<I shall!> Quath said sternly.

But her bravado was a cover for her own churning inner world. She stared upward at the massive presence and murmured to herself, <All this talk of Illuminates, beings I have never seen—and now they fight one another! By what measure are they greater than this whirling thing I can barely comprehend?—whose majesty I sense with my every pore and membrane? No, there is error here. They see mere size, and that is the fulcrum of their world. What I seek is meaning. That I hunger for—far more than I need the pesky Nought.>

The fragile air filled with glorious notes.

Prev Next

EIGHT

Galactic Center #04 - Tides of Light