Blade, page 9
part #4 of Inverted Frontier Series
“What is all this?” Urban asked—more than once.
Ashok answered, “Simulations.” And later, “Mapping functions,” and also, “Compositional analyses.”
Probably most of it was being used to observe and model the complex debris field around Ryo, but Urban could not grasp how, the means of it remaining opaque to his senses. Opaque and alien. The meaning of that latter word became ever more deeply impressed upon his mind. And yet despite their wildly different origins and divergent senses, he quickly grasped that Inventions were both curious and intellectually ambitious beings, and with this realization, an idea came to him: a bright sparkling possibility that required time to fully consider.
So, saying goodbye to Ashok, he yielded his avatar to Shoran, who was first in line among other Dragoneers eager to visit the great ship and its unexpected inhabitant.
Returning to Dragon, Urban merged with his ghost on the high bridge. He brought with him his sense of wonder, allowing it to spill out across the philosopher cells, rousing their curiosity.
Apart from the cells, he was alone there, making it easy to orchestrate the attention of the field, to direct it toward the great ship, plainly visible now to their far-ranging senses. He visualized for them the domains of life Ashok had described and they responded with intense curiosity, searching the memories they carried, plunging into deep time, seeking for a similar experience.
A meaningful proportion of the field’s shared memories had been lost at Tanjiri, when Urban had purged the most violent and aggressive cell lines. And more memories had gone when the Cryptologist re-engineered the surviving cells. Even so, great segments of history remained and it was not impossible that the field retained a memory of the death of the Inventors’ world.
So much death. So much lost to the past. Yet life lay ahead at Hupo Sei. Ashok had confirmed it. Synthetic life, it was true, though Urban did not find that idea so disturbing now that he knew more of the Inventions and their history.
The original cohort had arrived at Hupo Sei more than seventeen hundred years ago. Tens of thousands of cohorts had been spawned since then in diverse forms dictated by their intended purpose—though all shared an innate curiosity and a drive to create.
During their first years at Hupo Sei, the Inventions had confined their activities to exploring the ruins. Only when they confirmed the system to be essentially uninhabited did they begin to gather and sort matter, and then to build, spinning out habitats in hundreds of forms and in a spectrum of sizes, filling them with synthetic life.
All this they did for themselves. For the Inventors, they resolved to re-create a world out of the ruins. It was an ongoing effort, that Ashok regarded with open skepticism.
“As you measure time,” it had explained, “this new world has been one thousand seven hundred twenty-five years in the making. Year by year, more matter accumulates in this proto-world—but even after so long it does not have mass enough to collapse on itself. We skeptics have designated it the Labyrinth—that is the parallel term in your language—because it is an unstable amalgamation of broken megastructures and remnant debris. But the Originalists—they are a faction among us—insist that it is for us to replace the Inventor’s lost world, no matter the energy and time such a project will require. The immense time. Half a billion years at least. That is the optimistic estimate.”
Listening to Ashok, an intriguing possibility had blossomed in Urban’s mind. At Tanjiri, the composite being known as Ezo had generated a blade and used it to create a living world. Could such a feat be repeated at Hupo Sei, speeding the work of the Inventions? Maybe. But only if the Cryptologist could be persuaded to reveal what she knew of blades. She might though, if the goal was to aid these strange migrants.
Urban said nothing of it yet. He resolved to say nothing until he learned far more of the Inventions and of their factions, their ethics, their goals. But the possibility was there, a bright point in his mind. And he liked Ashok, even as he recognized that the synthetic’s personality was surely artificial, shaped to successfully engage with Tio Suthrom.
What is life?
So many possible answers to such a simple question, leaving him more eager than ever to visit Hupo Sei and see for himself what sort of life the Inventions had chosen and to learn for himself if there was after all truth in the ancient taboo forbidding the creation of free and free-thinking machines.
Chapter
16
Jolly’s luck had run out.
At Tanjiri, random chance had awarded him a place among the team that visited the Sakurans. He’d been with the first delegation to the Narans too. And he’d been lucky enough—if it could be called luck—to be first to venture to Prakruti, in the company of the Cryptologist.
But here at Ryo, chance was not on his side. In the randomized list of Dragoneers wanting a turn to visit the alien warren aboard Alaka‘i Onyx, his name had come up last. Given there were only two artificial avatars, it was going to be some time before his turn came. But he would happily give up that turn altogether to be the one accompanying Riffan on a real visit to the great ship.
Barefoot, dressed in shorts and a simple pullover shirt, he squeezed into a transit bubble with Abby. She held his hand, the smooth glove of her lavender skin suit cool against the flesh of his palm. Smiling with irrepressible delight, she pulled him into an embrace that he returned, her skin suit slick beneath his hands. She kissed his lips, his cheeks, murmuring, “I still can’t believe I get to go. I only wish you could come too.”
“So do I,” he admitted with a little forced laugh.
Everything about the discovery of Alaka‘i Onyx fascinated him—but frustrated him too, because he had no part in it beyond extracting a promise from Urban to protect the strange vessel. A needless promise, as it turned out, since Griffin had been taken over before the other Clemantine even knew what was out there. Jolly wanted to do so much more, to contribute more, to see more, with his own eyes. He longed for wider horizons than the gee deck.
He said nothing of this to Abby, determined to cast no shadow on her joy. Kissing her cheek, he told her, “If it’s not me, I’m glad it’s you and Riffan who get to go. Just think about it! You’ll be the first to meet, actually meet, an alien intelligence. That’s awesome. It’s amazing!”
As he said this, the transit bubble reached Argo, opening onto the interior of the little landing ship. Riffan was already there in his amber skin suit. “Hey Abby! Right on time.”
“Of course!” she declared with a laugh. “Nothing could make me miss this.” She gave Jolly one more kiss. “Bye,” she whispered, and pushed off, leaving him in the transit bubble while she moved ahead, riding her luck into Argo.
Only after the transit bubble closed and began to automatically ferry him back to the warren, did Jolly allow his glum mood to surface. But a deep sigh did little to relieve the pressure on a heart weighed down by what he could only describe as spiritual claustrophobia.
The transit bubble returned him to the warren, with its waving tendrils of wall-weed. No one was about, leaving him free to complain out loud.
“I miss planets,” he murmured, wondering how many years, how many centuries would have to pass before he stood on a living world again.
He did not regret leaving Verilotus. Still, he doubted he would ever reconcile his mind to the vast gulfs of space and time between star systems. Even Urban needed to modify his persona, taking on the aspect of the Sentinel to endure the years.
As if summoned by this thought, Urban spoke his name: *Jolly.
Jolly gripped a strand of wall-weed and glanced around, startled at the queer timing of this query. *Where are you? he asked, even as he checked the personnel map.
To Jolly’s surprise, the map showed Urban back in his chamber in the warren, even while every other Dragoneer—other than Riffan and Abby—crowded the gee deck, drawn there, drawn together and animated by the miraculous discovery of alien life.
*Why are you here by yourself? Jolly asked, abandoning his plan to return to the gee deck, backtracking to Urban’s chamber instead. The door opened for him, then closed after he clambered inside.
Urban lay as before, unclothed, as if just emerged from cold sleep, with strands of wall-weed twining around his long figure. He eyed Jolly with a sleepy expression.
“You’re still out there with the missiles,” Jolly guessed. “Why? Don’t you trust yourself to control Griffin?”
“I’m not with Griffin anymore. I left that ship to the Cryptologist.”
“On her own?” Jolly asked, incredulous.
“She’s not alone. She has the Bio-mechanic.”
“Ah. Okay . . . I guess.”
Jolly did not want to talk more about the Cryptologist. Her visit to Ezo had changed her. She’d become a different, more aloof being. And everything had changed between them. He still missed the person she used to be.
Urban said, “I’m sorry you didn’t get a seat on Argo. I know you wanted to go.”
“A lot of people wanted to go, but luck was with Riffan and Abby.” He frowned. “Luck is always with Riffan.”
Urban chuckled. “Sooth. I’ve noticed.”
Then, tentatively, Jolly asked, “What was it like to visit the synthetic’s warren that first time?”
Urban’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve run the simulation. You know exactly what it was like.”
“What it looked like, yes. What you learned there. But what did it feel like? To be the first one there, the first to experience it—”
“Hey, it wasn’t just me. Pasha was there.”
“It must have been amazing, fascinating,” Jolly enthused.
“Confusing,” Urban confessed with a flash of a smile. “I had no idea what I was seeing. I still have no idea.”
“Alien.”
“Yes. Alien.” A shrug. “Your turn to visit—”
“Won’t be for a while,” Jolly interrupted sourly.
“It’ll come, and you’ll get to see and feel for yourself.”
Not technically true. “I’ll see it through the avatar, though I don’t think that’s going to be any different from experiencing the simulation.”
“Of course it will be, because you’ll be in control of the avatar and able to ask your own questions.”
Jolly hesitated. He didn’t want to complain. No, that wasn’t right. He didn’t want to sound like he was complaining.
“Say it,” Urban urged, eyeing him with an annoyed squint.
Jolly looked askance before admitting, “I feel like I’ve already been there. Over and over, with all the simulations I’ve run. I’m going to go when my turn comes, but it won’t be like a new experience.”
“Sooth. But this is just the start, Jolly. There’s more to come. There’s wonder in this encounter. So keep an open mind, because the existence of the Inventions, their alien nature and history and needs, is sure to open up possibilities we would never have truly considered before.”
Jolly responded to this pronouncement with a short, surprised, skeptical laugh. He couldn’t help himself. It was too weird. First, because Urban never indulged in such romanticism. His second objection he spoke aloud, “Come on, Urban. You always consider every possibility. You’re the one who wanted to make a blade.”
Urban tensed, eyes narrowing in a cold, cautious gaze. “I still do,” he said softly.
“I don’t. I never would.”
A bold denial that induced a flash of anger, of disappointment, there and gone on Urban’s face. “It doesn’t matter,” he concluded, turning away.
Feeling miffed himself, Jolly almost left then. But that would leave things awkward between them and he didn’t want that. So he forged on, attempting to draw Urban out with a question. “Do you think we’ll stay here at Ryo? Or go on directly to Hupo Sei? I know a lot of people think we should stay and take the time to survey the ruins, since we’re here anyway.”
Urban turned back, eyed him thoughtfully, and asked, “What would you rather do?”
“I want to go on. Ryo is all dust and failure, but at Hupo Sei there are thousands of thriving habitats to explore.”
This won a slight smile. “Sooth. I feel the same.”
Jolly smiled in turn, pleased to be allied with Urban, and not at cross purposes. “We need to convince the other Dragoneers.”
“No, we need to convince the Inventions. We possess technologies they’ve never encountered before and can’t begin to understand. That makes us dangerous, Jolly. And when Ashok’s reports reach their decision-making body—Ashok calls it the Core Forum—they’re going to be afraid.”
Jolly nodded thoughtfully. Any initial encounter between alien entities must surely be utterly unpredictable and laden with potential dangers. But this was not an initial encounter. “The Inventions already know a lot about humans through the pilot, Tio Suthrom.”
Urban rolled his eyes. “That’s part of the problem. Tio Suthrom believes humans to be inherently violent and deplorable, with the ruins of both Ryo and Hupo Sei as proof. We need to persuade Ashok it isn’t always so, because only Ashok can persuade the Core Forum to set aside caution and let us come. I won’t approach Hupo Sei without their explicit permission. Keep that in mind, when it’s your turn to visit Ashok.”
Jolly kept it in mind.
Prior to his visit, he ran every sim recorded by other Dragoneers who had visited before him. He listened to their discussions with Ashok, and absorbed their observations. No one—neither Ashok nor any Dragoneer—had yet broached the possibility of a visit to Hupo Sei. The advantage of being last, Jolly decided, was that Ashok would be thoroughly accustomed to humans and hard to startle.
By the time his ghost inscribed its appearance on one of the artificial avatars, he felt he knew his way around the alien warren, and he was able to chat amiably with the single instance of Ashok escorting him. After a time, he asked, “I wonder if we all seem mostly the same to you. Each one of us only a little different from any other?”
“This is correct,” Ashok assured him in a pleasantly cheerful voice. “Your species presents minimal design variation. But there is sufficient difference in trivial details to allow me to distinguish and recognize individual entities.”
“It’s not like that with your people, is it?” And without waiting for an answer, Jolly plunged on, saying what no one else had dared to say for fear of receiving a hard No. “Ashok, you must know we Dragoneers desire to visit Hupo Sei, to observe the Inventions in their diversity, and the creations they have made. Do you think the Core Forum would allow it?”
For several seconds, Ashok said nothing. If the synthetic had breathed, Jolly would have called it a breathless silence. When it finally spoke again, Ashok said only, “The future is fluid. I cannot say.”
While Jolly had hoped for more, he took comfort in this answer, telling Urban later, “At least it was not a denial.”
Chapter
17
Riffan’s eyes eased open: a gentle waking after days of hibernation in one of Argo’s acceleration couches. He stretched and flexed, his amber skin suit moving with him.
Random selection had favored Riffan once again: he had won the first of only two seats aboard the lander, making it his privilege, and Abby’s, to physically meet—flesh to gel, so to speak—the cohort of alien synthetics that called itself Ashok.
“Are we there?” Abby murmured from the couch beside him.
Argo answered her. “Affirmative. The planned rendezvous with the great ship, Alaka‘i Onyx, has been accomplished. Course and speed are a match, with a distance of twenty meters between the two vessels. Communication has been established and Alaka‘i Onyx has spawned a tunnel to bridge the gap.”
“Not much left for us to do then,” Abby said, sounding disgruntled.
Riffan replied with an opposing enthusiasm. “Except to say hello to the first intelligent and friendly alien life ever encountered in our known history.” He pushed away from his couch, generating a slight momentum that sent him floating across a cabin empty of everything except their two stacked acceleration couches. They did not even have go-packs, wanting to ensure there would be room enough for Ashok’s full cohort.
As Abby followed Riffan’s lead, she admitted, “It’s still hard for me to think of this synthetic entity as ‘life.’”
“That is the bias of our culture,” Riffan agreed, reaching out to catch a hand-hold beside the gel membrane of Argo’s lock.
Abby joined him there, wearing a lavender skin suit, hood down, with her long black hair confined in a braided coil. She raised an eyebrow, fixed him with a challenging gaze: “Alkimbra says it’s not bias, it’s experience. A lesson learned and repeated more than once in our long history.” Her serious demeanor evaporated. She laughed in giddy excitement and added, “But Urban says to give them a chance—because they’re not human-made machines, after all.”
“Possibly a factor in their favor,” Riffan agreed.
He turned to a wall screen displaying the tunnel’s interior, with a view all the way across to the great ship’s red-lit lock. The lock was still empty, its inner door closed.
Only Ashok would enter the tunnel. A protocol had been worked out that called for Riffan and Abby to wait behind Argo’s gel membrane for the synthetic to arrive.
Since Alaka‘i Onyx had generated the tunnel, Riffan expected it to be filled with Ashok’s preferred atmosphere—reportedly a low-oxygen mix that minimized the hazardous side effects of the highly reactive gas. Instead, a read-out at the base of the screen informed him the air in the tunnel was ship standard.
“Well, that’s odd,” he muttered, pointing at the data. Because as a machine—Riffan mentally corrected himself—as a synthetic, Ashok surely did not breathe.
“Motion detected,” Argo’s DI announced.
At the same time, Abby murmured in breathless excitement, “There!”
The inner door of Alaka‘i Onyx’s lock opened, revealing a human figure beyond, slightly bent to fit within the limits of a transit bubble. A fully human figure.
