Communion of Dreams, page 7
Gates also looked at the singers. “Shouldn’t at least our crew be back getting ready to depart? I mean, we’re scheduled to leave in just a couple of hours.”
“You haven’t done a lot of space travel, have you?”
“Not really. I hate it. Been to the Moon several times, but that’s it.”
“Well, standard procedure when a ship docks is to prepare it for the next trip, first thing. Crew doesn’t leave the ship until it is ready to go. That way, if there’s ever any kind of an emergency, the ship can leave immediately.”
Sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu,
Groweth sed and bloweth med, and springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu!
Awe bleteth after lomb, lhouth after calve cu,
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth, murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu cuccu, ne swik thu naver nu.
* * *
He and Gates split up after enjoying dinner. Or, rather, she left him to go explore a bit more on her own. He left the restaurant, found a secluded bench near the bottom of the atrium, and just sat, enjoying the music and the view. Even after the music stopped, he stayed there for a long while.
“Seth?”
“Yes Jon?” The expert appeared.
“Time to go. Roust everyone out of whatever they’re doing, have them head to the dock.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Not on this end. How about you?”
“I was going to contact you once you were settled on the da Vinci, but we can go over these things now. I’ll upload the latest postings, but there’s nothing there which needs your immediate attention. Also, I’ve established a schedule with the ship’s expert for routine communications.”
“Good.” Jon stood, prepared to leave. But Seth was still there. “Something more?”
“Well, as you know, we won’t be able to communicate in real-time for very long once the ship departs. And I just wanted to wish you well on the mission. Be sure to take care of yourself, and me, out there.”
“Seth, you almost sound . . . anxious.” While experts were prepared to understand and respond to human emotion, the consensus was that they were incapable of emotion themselves.
“Not exactly. But I find this thin-film machine . . . limiting.”
It was Jon’s turn to smile. “I’ll take care of us both, promise.”
The image of Seth lingered a moment, then vanished. Jon looked up into the atrium one last time, and made for the dock.
Chapter 4
The da Vinci was one of the larger ships in what passed for the USSA fleet. It fit the standard model of the Fusion-Plasma design, in use for more than a dozen years, and generated constant thrust which was a significant fraction of one gravity. The crew complement was 26. In addition to the human crew, there were three thin-film experts on board. One controlled the engines and their power plant. One managed life support and a small back-up fusion furnace. The other handled navigation and communications. All three experts were capable of managing all aspects of ship operations, and in fact each monitored the critical functions of the others. This redundancy was considered the optimum for safety and efficiency.
Jon was in his quarters unpacking. The room was small, efficiently designed. It reminded him of the private sleeping compartments still used in trains. A foldout bunk for sleeping, a comfortable bench for sitting which could be converted into a second bed if needed. A narrow closet at one end, drawers under the bench. The wall adjoining the next cabin and the narrow corridor outside could be retracted. If this were done with the walls to the four cabins off this hallway, a fair-sized room could be created. The ship was designed with six such clusters on the passenger level. Jon’s team used two clusters, the military attachment used two. The remaining two were opened up, and served as common areas.
There was a tapping at the door. Sliding back the wall, he found Commander Navarr outside.
“Good evening,” said the younger man.
“Well, hello.” Jon looked around. “Sorry, I’m not settled in here yet.”
“That’s fine. I just wanted to stop by and welcome you aboard, see if there was anything we needed to discuss.”
Jon raised an eyebrow. “OK. What’s on your mind?”
“Not much. Just wanted to get to know you a bit, see what you really thought of the artifact. Off the record, as it were.”
“Pretty much what I think of it on the record, actually: it’s too soon to know anything.” Jon considered a moment. “I figured I’d get my team together for brainstorming sessions while we’re en route to Titan. We don’t have a lot of hard information to go on yet, and won’t until the technical team gets into their analysis. But it won’t hurt to try and get a handle on the issues involved. Why don’t you join us?”
“Sure. There isn’t a lot for me to do while we’re in transit.”
“Good.” Jon paused, looked closely at the man. “So, what do you think?”
“Of the artifact? I think we have to be very careful.”
“Oh? It hasn’t evidenced any kind of a threat yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. An anti-vehicle landmine won’t go off when you step on it. But bring a troop transport by, and it can kill a lot of people.”
Jon nodded slowly. “I definitely want you in on our discussions.”
“Thanks, but I checked your file. You saw fighting during the Restoration. You can figure this stuff out.”
“Yeah, but those are old instincts. And what I learned was mostly just practical survival.”
“Worth its weight in gold.”
Jon smiled. “See you in the morning.”
* * *
He woke early the next morning, went down the hall to one of the two small communal bathrooms and showered. After that, he climbed the ladder down to the second floor of the ship. Crew quarters, somewhat larger than the ones the passengers had. There was also a holo room and a small galley. A couple of members of the crew were there, finishing breakfast before they went on duty. He greeted them as he looked over the meal options, found something and popped it in the warmer. As he waited the few seconds until the meal was ready, the crew members left and Jackie Gates came into the room.
“Morning,” she said.
“You look a little rough this morning.”
“Like I said, I don’t much care for spaceflight. I can never sleep worth a damn in these little cabins.”
Jon got his meal out of the warmer, sat down to eat. Gates looked over the food options, decided on just fresh fruit, poured herself a cup of coffee, and sat across the narrow table from him, her back to the door.
“What’s up this morning?” She sipped her coffee.
“Well, I figured we’d get the team together, do a little brainstorming, just get to know one another a little bit.”
“Reasonable.” She sipped, bit into a crisp apple. “So, what do ya think?”
“Of the artifact?”
“What else?”
“Too soon to say.”
She considered this, said nothing. Just then Arthur Bailey came into the room.
“Morning!” He was bright, full of energy.
Gates cringed, said nothing.
“Good morning, Arthur,” said Jon. “Settled in?”
“Oh yeah. Man, I feel like a kid again.” He stepped to the food dispenser.
Gates gave Jon a pained look. Without saying anything, she stood, gulped at her coffee and took another bite of the apple, dumped the remainder of both in the disposal and left.
Bailey watched her leave, turned back to make his own food selection. “Not exactly the effect I like to have on people.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. She doesn’t like space travel.”
Bailey popped his selection in the warmer, leaned against the bulkhead as he waited for it to cycle. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Jon suppressed a smile. “So, you enjoying yourself?”
“Yeah. I’ve been looking forward to getting out to Titan for a long time. The fact that this other thing has come up just makes it all that much more interesting.” He sat with his breakfast, started to eat.
“Well, glad that you’re enthusiastic about it. So, ready to get started?”
“I already have.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, made some contacts with the crew.”
“Why? I thought you were specifically interested in the mining operation on Titan itself.”
“Oh, sure. But this ship, and the whole support system, exists in large part because of the mining operation. Like the paddle wheelers that supplied goods to the gateway communities of the American West.”
Jon nodded, finished the last of his breakfast. “I’d like to get everyone together later this morning, say about eleven, and do a bit of brainstorming. See if we can come up with some preliminary ideas.”
“Sure, I’ve been thinking about it.” Bailey paused. “I guess we all probably have.”
Jon nodded. “A pretty good bet, I’d say.”
* * *
He tapped into the ship’s system, “Raphaello?”
The managing expert appeared. Tall, blond, muscular. Wearing the standard jumpsuit that ship’s crew wore. “Mr. Thompson. How may I help you this morning?”
“I just wanted to download my messages.”
“Of course,” said the vaporous figure. Jon saw the file titles appear. “Anything else?”
Jon’s attention had been captured by the one title. “Oh, um, no. That’s all for now.”
Raphaello nodded curtly, disappeared.
Curious, Jon opened the file which had caught his eye. Before him appeared the craggy face of Darnell Sidwell. In his slightly rough voice the old man said, “I hear you’ll be gettin’ here couple o’ days before the scientists. Good. Come an’ see me. Alone. There’s some things we need t’ discuss.”
Jon sat back and thought about the old man. His file was pretty skimpy, just general information on some of the places he had been in space, starting with the Israelis when they first colonized the Moon in the early years of the century. Then he was next known to be prospecting asteroids for them. Spent a little time on Mars. A while on Europa, when that settlement was still in its infancy. Eventually he wound up on Titan, in the first wave of gel miners.
Jon had met Sidwell half a dozen years ago, when he first took over the position of USSA Outer System Admin. The old man was prone to fits of profanity. He drank too much. He even would occasionally smoke. He didn’t seem to care about much of anything, himself the least of all. Yet he was the oldest man Jon knew, or knew of, for that matter. Jon sent a simple response: “I’ll be there.”
Jon turned his attention to the other things waiting for him, all routine. He answered the messages he needed to answer, then contacted each member of his team to make sure they would be present at the meeting later that morning.
* * *
They sat on benches in one of the common areas. Ling was laying on the floor on her stomach, the small holo projector in front of her. The miniature Seth, in his flowing robes of red and gold, entertained her with some new educational program.
Jon introduced Navarr, explained the role he and his troops played in helping to provide security, without going into details. Then he looked around the room. “So, what do you think? What is this thing? What does it do?”
“What it is and what it does are two very different questions.” Bailey said.
“How so? Isn’t its function necessarily related to its design?” Jackie Gates asked. “The very fact that it has certain capabilities tells us a lot about what it is supposed to do. I don’t bother designing a system with emotional analogs if all it is going to do is monitor robots in a factory.”
“You’re assuming that it was designed,” said Gish. “What if it is, or once was, alive?”
“Let’s assume that it’s a technological artifact, and not an ‘entity’. At least until the biologists have a chance to look at it and come to some kind of a conclusion on that question.”
“Well, Gish makes a good point. It could still have been alive, just manufactured. A living machine,” said Gates. “Our tholin gel technology is more alive than not.”
“Granted. But regardless of the base tech, what does the thing do? Any ideas?”
“Probe. Perhaps it is just a research probe, sent to gather information.” Klee said. He paused just a moment, continued, “Either it got no further than Titan while doing a systematic sweep, or something drew it there.”
“Maybe the same thing that brought us to Titan,” said Bailey.
“Gel?” suggested Gates.
Bailey nodded. “Could be. We’ve found the stuff to be very useful, and we’ve only known about it for a few years.”
“Perhaps the thing isn’t just a probe, but some sort of mining machine?” said Gates.
Jon looked skeptical. “But mining implies a much larger operation. Look at what we have there: dozens of miners, tens of thousands of microbots, and an entire support system.”
“It could just be the difference in either approach or capability,” said Bailey. “Perhaps this one artifact was able to do all the mining which needed to be done. Perhaps the makers of the artifact are a species which lives and works alone most of the time, and that is reflected in the manner of operation of their machines.”
Jon considered this. “Or maybe it’s just the equivalent of a lost microbot. Our prospectors lose them all the time.”
“You mean this thing was just accidently left behind?” said Gates.
“Or intentionally. Maybe it was broken, and too much trouble to mess with. Better to just leave it.”
“And we just got lucky and stumbled across it,” said Jon.
“Perhaps it wasn’t an accident after all,” said Klee.
Jon looked at him. “What do you mean?”
The older man tugged at his short, white goatee. “Perhaps it was designed to make contact with us, but stationed on Titan so that we’d have to progress that far technologically before it could happen.”
“Then why hasn’t it tried to contact us before? We’ve been there a number of years.”
“Perhaps it was damaged.” Klee considered. “Perhaps it was only intended to let us know that it exists, and that is the only message it has for us. Just let us know that we’re not alone. Something simple, nonthreatening. A message in a bottle.”
“There are much easier ways to send a message,” said Gish. “We looked for decades, on every wavelength of the radio spectrum we could think of. SETI, and all the searches that followed, found nothing.”
Jon looked at him. “Then why are you such a believer? What evidence convinced you?”
“I’m not sure I can explain it. I never really could before, as you know.” Gish dragged a hand through his somewhat ratty hair. “Back before the turn of the century, physicists had created a new state of matter called a Bose-Einstein Condensate. I started working with it as a hypersensitive detector, and it became the key component for our modern space sensors. It’s used in the Advanced Survey Array.
“Early on, my work with BEC had shadows in the data I couldn’t explain. Just blank spots, no background noise or anything. The sensors worked, but there were just these dead areas. It didn’t interfere with the functioning of the sensors as far as I could tell. But I couldn’t explain it. No one could.”
“Your message in a bottle?” asked Jon.
“No. There isn’t any kind of content being communicated. There’s no transmission signal or anything there. It’s just null content. Dead.”
“So?” asked Bailey.
Gish sighed, clearly a little exasperated. “It’s too quiet. There should be noise there, something. Instead, there’s nothing.”
“But that isn’t proof of extraterrestrial intelligence,” said Gates. “I see your problem.”
“Now, however, we have proof. And maybe there’s a connection.”
Navarr had been watching the others, saying nothing. Now he spoke up. “Maybe it’s a probe of a different sort than the one Johan has suggested. Maybe more of a sentry.”
“Sentry?” said Klee. “Like a guard? Of what?”
“Something on Titan, presumably,” said Navarr.
Gates thought about it. “Could be the gel.”
Bailey shook his head. “But only if the artifact is nonfunctional, since we’ve been mining and removing gel for a half-dozen years.”
“The fact that it somehow manages to hover in one place suggests that it’s at least partly functional,” said Jon.
Bailey said, “Maybe there’s something else hidden on Titan that it is guarding. Perhaps a mining complex, other equipment. Something which we haven’t found yet.”
Ng lifted the brim of his slouch hat a ways. He leaned forward and slowly asked, “Why does it have to do anything? Maybe it is just a monument. A bit of sculpture left behind. Think aesthetics. That will tell you much about the culture.”
Bailey seemed intrigued. “Aesthetics, hmm. I usually think of function reflecting culture.”
Ng licked his lips. With a visible effort, he continued to speak. “We’ve separated art from functionality. Not all cultures have.”
Bailey thought for a moment. “He’s right. Think back to the scientific instruments of the Enlightenment. They weren’t just practical, they were small works of art in their own right, with beautiful craftsmanship.”
Gates almost scowled. “That doesn’t make any sense. It wouldn’t have allowed itself to be buried under meters of tholin. And the reports say that the artifact is even difficult to see. What sort of aesthetic is invisibility?”
Ng had sat back on the bench, his hat pulled back down. But slowly he spoke again. “Maybe our eyes are too weak to see its dance, our ears too deaf to hear its song.”
There was a pause. Jon looked around the room. “Other thoughts?”
Gates said, “I find it interesting that it is positioned right above a large burl of gel.”
