SIX

The Song of Electrons

Toby stood on the hull and gazed out, through the gliding stellar majesty toward True Center. The entire galaxy spun about a single cloud-shrouded point. So much brimming brilliance, made to waltz by a hub of remorseless dark.

Already the ship was gaining momentum, cutting across shrouded dust lanes and bringing fresh splashes of light into view. Toby felt a smoldering anger at the mechs who were approaching on blue-white exhaust plumes, driving Argo to flee. They were relentless, riding their lances of scalding plasma, an age-old enemy that would hound down any remnant of humanity. They had been just a light-day away, hiding somewhere in the churning murk.

Even in this swirl of stars there was little chance to escape. Argo’s long-range scanners had picked up mech exhaust images coming from several directions—cutting off the easy orbits, the ones out and away from the Center.

So their trajectory was being pressed ever-inward. Toward the black hole that squatted at True Center. A trap.

Toby had listened to his Isaac Aspect consult even older, scratchy Aspects, and then go on about the huge dark star, but it all seemed so strange, so impossible. Through ten billion years the galaxy had fed it. Stars had been swept into it by the tides of gravity and dusty friction. Once, civilizations had thrived around those lost suns. As their parent stars were swept inward, to be baked and shredded and devoured, whole alien races had been forced to flee or die.

Isaac’s history lessons were pretty sparse about those distant times. Much was imagined, but little known. Some civilizations had escaped, Isaac said. They had made strange, metallic colonies that harvested the great energy resources here. Ahead of Argo lay such refuges. Cities of the center—alien, enormous, forbidding. Greater than Chandeliers, and far older.

He shook himself and turned to his task—coaxing Quath in for the Family Bishop Gathering. The bulky alien labored with the last walls of her intricate nest, stacking the bricks in a sheltering nook where two farm domes met.

“Come on, big-bug, it’s about to start.”

Quath hefted a thick slab without apparent effort. <It is your species’ ceremony. [untranslatable] I show respect by not attending.>

“It’s more like a brawl with rules. Anyway, the Cap’n wants you there to speak.”

<An honor I must decline, eater-of-vermin.>

“Look, dung-master, this is important.”

<More important for you to return inside.>

“Huh? Why?”

<Witness with both your hindbrain and forebrain—the song of electrons.>

Toby followed Quath’s double-jointed gesture. Now that he swept his gaze around, he picked out a soft, ivory glow all around Argo. It danced and shimmered, like a mist blown by an unseen wind. “Pretty. So what?”

<Those are high-energy electrons which strike our magnetic shields. As they are brushed aside, they emit their own small howls of outrage. Photons of dismay and discomfort.>

“Yeah, life’s tough. Still, so what?”

<We encounter many more such electrons now. There are multitudes, near the galactic core. Their radiations will soon make it unsafe for you to walk this hull.>

Toby frowned. He had always thought that Argo’s magnetic fields kept all the dangerous stuff away. But such fields could not stop weightless light, and he knew that the really harmful stuff was much higher in frequency, far above what humans could sense.

“You can see the hard radiation?”

<All my species can. We did not evolve on such a comfortable world as you.>

“Ummm. I better get back inside. You’re coming too—Cap’n’s orders.”

<If it is an order, I must obey. My species knows such things as well.>

“Quath, you started tearing apart your wasp-nest and packing it away before we even knew mechs were coming. How come?”

<The tide of events is set.>

“You think so?” Quath never said anything lightly. Or else an alien sense of humor didn’t come over that way. For all Toby knew, losing a leg might be a great joke for Quath. Toby had seen her take off one of her own legs once and make a strange sucking sound. He had assumed Quath had been crying or groaning, but maybe it had been a parlor game.

<There is no way out.>

“Pretty fatalistic, ol’ crap-crafter.”

<But there is a way in.>

Toby could not extract any further explanation from Quath, and by the time he got the alien inside the Gathering had already started. Aces and Fivers arguing with Bishops—even though they shared a lot of cultural manners and even ancient tales.

Luckily, the first part was a kind of disorganized dance, and music hammered through the large hall where all Family Bishop mingled with people they had picked up from New Bishop, the last world they had fled. A happy mob. Except, of course, for the assigned watch officers—no Family could ever relax entirely.

Toby tried to fall into the mood of a Gathering. Quath wanted to stand in a corner, towering over everyone, eyes gazing into an abstract distance. Toby joined a group-gavotte, remembering the words from childhood.

Put your hand on your hip,

Let your backbone slip.

Snake it at your feet

Motion in the meat

Flip it to your vest

Shake it to the one you love best.

Not too dignified, but then Gatherings often weren’t. From watching his father Toby understood the underlying strategy.

Get people loosened up and feeling connected. Encourage them to dance and sing and call up worn memories of celebrations back on the homeworld. Play loud, boisterous music. Roll out the ceramic vats where grains and grapes lingered, making whiskeys and beer and wine. Let the Family get thoroughly into the alcohols. Even though they had enzymes swimming in their bloodstreams that would cut the effectiveness, the drinking did lift their spirits in time-honored fashion, making them more proud, confident—and reckless. Jack up the music a notch. Then confront them with a question that called on their resources, their sense of who Family Bishop was and where they should go.

Toby knew what Killeen was doing, but that was no reason not to enjoy it. He danced with Besen, had some of the crisp fresh wine, let its heady essence swarm up into his head.

Not enough to addle him, though. His own father had faced a big problem with alcohol, in the long time after the death of Toby’s mother. Then Killeen met Shibo and got the hard drinking behind him, pulled himself together and then became Cap’n. Toby knew little biology, but he understood that there could be a tendency for the son to carry a potential weakness of the father—so he watched his drinking. He couldn’t just depend on the helpful little enzyme friends.

It was a fine Gathering. He was even starting to feel real affection for Cermo. Considering how Cermo had been riding him, that had to be attributed to the alcohol.

Cermo had a creamy chocolate skin, gleaming sugar-rich in the soft lighting. One of the things Toby liked about the Family was that they kept the age-old differences in humans alive. Eyes were brown and blue and black, skins rough or smooth, yellow or pink or chocolate, noses lean and pointed or broad and commanding or perky and upturned. Something in their genes didn’t let these differences get ironed out, smoothed away through the generations. It added interest and spice, a flavor of a time when humans adapted to different places by slanting their eyes to see better, smudging their skin to ward off the sun, tapering their faces to keep warm.

He didn’t care that nature had done it for them, through slow, natural selection. Differences were like an ancient book, incomprehensible messages from an honored past, worth preserving. His own broad nose and slanted eyes seemed imminently practical. So did his swarthy skin and scratchy beard, just coming in. Inheritances. Deep history.

Then the throbbing music ebbed. Time to decide.

Killeen began to speak. He was not an ornate talker, like some Toby had heard, but his plain, flat way of putting things had a kind of simple eloquence. He told them the hard facts of their predicament. The mechs coming. Argo’s fuel reserves. Air and water and fluid balances. Fine for a while, but not enough for an extended, high-boost flight out of Galactic Center and into some possible refuge.

Quath testified to the mech’s probable plans. They would box in Argo, trap her in the whirlpool near True Center.

Then he used the Family sensorium. Every member saw in one eye the ancient engraving, with its meaning superimposed. Killeen read passages, his voice booming.

“‘Consumed the five kinds of living dead in still-glowing holy heat.’ There was a time when the mechs fell before us!”

The Family stirred, eyes staring into a dusty past.

“‘She shall rise as shall we all who plunge inward to the lair and library.’”

Killeen stood on a raised platform, dominating the crowd. His voice became more powerful, not by trick of timing but from a fullness of conviction. “They went there. Long ago. Even though she and they were ‘fevered still in ardor for humanity’s pearl palaces’—they left.”

Voices rose in agreement. There was in them a plaintive note, calling for connection with their own fabled history. Some sobbed. Others cursed.

“We are now besieged by mechs. They bear down upon us. True”—Killeen gestured to Quath—“we have allies. Quath’s species is following us, too, carrying that huge device of theirs, the Cosmic Circle. Powers we do not master, yes. Methods we cannot comprehend, yes. They are living creatures and offer us aid because of that holy connection, a sharing of all those who arose naturally from the very atoms of the galaxy itself.”

Hoarse calls of thanks to Quath. Of sputtering, cold-eyed rage against mechs.

He paused, fury trickling away, reason returning to the strong face. “But even with their help, only we can decide where we shall go.”

Killeen slowly cast his gaze across the faces he knew so well, over three hundred strong. “We all had relatives who died fighting Quath’s kind. That time is over. Now we fight alongside those we called the Cybers, and now term the Myriapodia.”

Something in his bearing called up that past, and used it in Killeen’s cause. Toby could see the effect on the crowd. Killeen was the man who had plunged through a Cyber-carved hole, clean through a planet—and lived. Killeen had ridden inside the Cyber Quath, prisoner—and had gotten away alive. He had talked with a magnetic being who spoke through the sky itself. And still earlier, Killeen had dealt with the Mantis and won them their freedom.

Now all that weight of history pressed down in Killeen’s favor. His eyes burned. His grave manner commanded. His people heard.

“We have a choice of turning to fight, against odds we do not and cannot know. Or we can choose to run and hope to escape.”

Glittering eyes sweeping them all in. “Is that it? Is that all?” Scornful curled lip. “No! No! I say there is a third way—a way opened by this tablet from our own distant ancestors.”

Toby growled, seeing how firmly the Cap’n held the room in his grasp. The rolling voice that lapped across Family Bishop was sure, certain—but Toby was not. He saw what was coming with a sense of helpless dread.

“We can follow them—the ancients. Into whatever lair they sought. It may still be there!”

Family stirred, murmured.

“Again, they had powers we cannot match—yeasay. Methods we cannot comprehend—yeasay. So their descendants—our cousins!—could still be there. The Family of Families—‘where eternity abides.’ What can that mean? What does it promise? Let us go—go and find out!”

From the roar of hot assent that rose and vibrated hard around him, Toby knew they were bound on a desperate course, and though he loved his father and wanted to follow him, the fear that coursed cold through him brought a shameful weakness to his knees.

Why was his father doing this? Where had his caution flown? He’s risking the Family to find out . . . what? About the past. What the Family means.

His Shibo Personality came forward unbidden. Her pale presence was a soft voice against the hubbub of white-eyed celebration that bubbled joyous all around him, jostling elbows and happy sweat and wrenched mouths.

They do not know what he fully wants. Does even he? I love that man, as much as this shaved-down self I have become can love. I fear him now, too. He promises a lair. He may bring them only a liar.

Frozen Star

Angular antennas reflect the bristling ultraviolet of the disk below. Shapes revolve. They live among clouds of infalling mass—swarthy, shredding under a hail of radiation. Infrared spikes, cutting gamma rays.

Among the dissolving clouds move silvery figures whose form alters to suit function. Liquid metal flows, firms. A new tool extrudes: matted titanium. It works at a deposit of rich indium. Chewing, digesting.

The harvesters swoop in long ellipticals high above the hard brilliance of the disk. As they swarm they strike elaborate arrays, geometric matrices. Their volume-scavenging strategy is self-evolved, purely practical, a simple algorithm. Yet it generates intricate patterns that unfurl and perform and then curl up again in artful, languorous beauty.

They have another, more profound function. Linked, they form a macroantenna. In a single-voiced chorus they relay complex trains of digital thought. Never do they participate in the cross-lacing streams of careful deliberation, any more than molecules of air care for the sounds they transmit.

Across light-minutes the conversation billows and clashes and rings.

They persist, these primates.

We/You did not attempt their extinction.

Yet.

True; we/you must learn more first.

The trap worked?

The engagement functioned as planned. We/You learned their craft’s position accurately when they visited the hulk of their former dwelling.

I/You were right to preserve that structure for these long eras.

It made simple the successful attachment of microsensors.

Direct infiltration?

They were blown onto the primate craft in the explosion. Then they burrowed inside.

This seems a needless bother.

We/You were too hasty, in the past, to merely erase such expeditions which ventured toward the Frozen Star.

A dislikable term. The black hole is far more noble than these words imply.

Yet even it began in the early eras of the galaxy from the seed of a single supernova. It has grown by a million times that original mass, but that does not change its nature.

But frozen? It lives in fire.

Only its image in space-time is frozen. To you/us, the swallowed mass takes forever to make its final descent into the throat of oblivion.

Very well; such technicalities bore more than they illuminate.

True, for some portions of you/us.

Yet the primates are still drawn to this nexus. What was that language you/we cited earlier, to illustrate how they think?

The image was like moths to the flame.

Bio logics are so simple. So linear. How can we/you be sure of their processings? Know their minds?

You/We cannot.

But with resources—

As you/I must face, there are matters which you/we cannot know even in principle.

Memory returns—yes. Some truths can never be proven within any logic system.

I/We did not refer to so obvious a theorem. Blind spots lurk in our very way of comprehending the universe. For these no one can compensate.

Surely you/I do not suggest that our/your kind share blindnesses with such as these primates!

All sentient forms have ways of filtering the world. In this all are alike.

Surely this does not mean that you/we cannot understand lesser forms and their primitive worldviews in their entirety?

Perhaps it does.

Lack of comprehension in such a grave matter is troubling.

Enough musing. As a practical matter alone, you/I oppose destroying this latest primate incursion. It would cost greatly.

This refers to the quasi-mechanicals.

They follow the primate craft and protect it.

We/You have dealt with their kind before.

They have greater craft than the humans. You/We have suffered from their skills.

They are tools! We/You use the quasi-mechanicals to track the humans.

They carry a hoop of sheared discontinuity. This makes tracking simple. But it would make a most disagreeable weapon, if turned against us/you.

I might remind us/you/them that we/you possessed several such discontinuities—once. Admittedly they were lost in the assault upon the Wedge in the era e {+[~ | ]}.

A grave mistake, one many of us/you opposed.

You/I need not relive that error.

Well spoken, as the one/many who made it.

Such distinctions are meaningless. The experience has been absorbed into all our selves.

Lessons unlearned still bring pain.

No one could have anticipated that the Wedge would swallow, digest, and then use the discontinuities, to build itself further. To make itself even more difficult to penetrate.

Caution would have saved us/you this instructive lesson of ours/yours.

You/We now understand that no one/many can even in principle know the stochastic geometry of the Wedge interior.

Excuses are useless now. The price will be great if we attack the quasi-mechanicals and their discontinuity.

You/I agreed, long ago, to use humans against the quasi-mechanicals. Yet we/you now find that they seem to have formed an alliance. This we/you could not anticipate. Carbon-based life has protocols we/you do not know. Need not know.

I/You wish it were so. But they were here before our kind and—

Many of us/you reject that thesis.

How can you/I? Organic forms arose first.

There are philosophies which hold that metal and ceramic were the original materials, shaped in electrolytic discharges, organized by accretion of clay and ion. The carbon-based forms devolved from that.

Historical records rebuke such theories.

Even so, your/our precious records still cannot tell us why we should fear the humans. Why especially humans? There were other carbon forms.

Which you/we eradicated.

With no remorse.

Conceded. But your/our ingrained drivers say that our kind must fathom the humans.

I/You urge that we/you at least damage them a bit. To reduce their powers.

Stay away from the discontinuity.

The human ship is moderately protected but we/you can productively damage it. There is no need to let them pass unharmed.

Detecting their craft among the galactic disk debris works only intermittently. Further, the quasi-mechanicals and their discontinuity warp the entire region, making precise location difficult.

Action is crucial! You/We know that they have conversed with one member of the magnetic kingdom.

That is an unfortunate turn. It confirms the information conveyed by a submind.

Which was this/us?

We/You delegated study of the remaining primates to |>A<|. It wrapped itself around the planet of these primates’ origin.

And reported little of use.

True. But |>A<| arranged for the primates to believe that they had their own ship, and freedom of movement. This made it far simpler—given the primates’ psychology-sets—to use them. They formed an alliance with the quasi-mechanicals, which brought them here.

Why involve the quasi-mechanicals at all? All this history obscures more than it illuminates.

They may know what the primates do not.

That is an infinite amount.

I refer to what you/we do not know. What we seek.

Without knowing quite what that mysterious stuff might be. I tire of such obscurations. Fetch this |>A<|, that I/we might dip into it.

Done. Light-travel time will delay |>A<| In the interval, we should do more.

Then you/we concede that humans should be pruned, reduced.

I/You suggest that we lay another trap for them? Something to draw them in, give us a known vector for them.

That might clarify the basic issue.

Which is?

What do they seek here? Carbon-based forms wilt under the sling of hard radiation.

True, this is not their province.

The deeper concern is, why do we/you wonder about them so? When we/you should simply kill them.

In other words, why do I/we exist? Is a critical voice necessary? Is our divided intelligence here simply to irk you/we?

Enough rumination. Act!