Dr. Alien, page 20
Finally Deal clicked. “Such a pity you cannot see this, Gara.”
I felt so shocked by the poverty of his response and that he’d soil such a moment with a cheap dig at Gara that I turned to stare at him. The way his limbs quivered and all his sensory cilia pointed straight ahead told me that I’d misjudged. He’d been sincere.
“Our hosts,” Gara said, “have provided me a most detailed image sonic. I wish you could hear what I hear.” She, too, spoke sincerely.
If this was the Houck’s galaxy, it had to be the mother of all galaxies. Its profuse stars appeared strangely shaped, most were oversized and oblong, wrapped in filmy, sparkling veils in innumerable subtle tints. The galaxy seemed tilted away from us at an angle, but I could tell this jeweled empyrean was basically oval, somewhat flattened, and much longer than wide, its ends blunted. A consistently bluish streak ran along much of the internal center, but beyond that the spectrum played wild and random games. Gossamer branches of color streamed from the sides, top, and bottom. Past the main edges, diamond-like stretched-out stars, presumably closer to us than the rest, seemed to either have countless facets or a fuzzy quality that my eyes couldn’t resolve.
“Wow!” Alex shouted in a whisper, and I had to agree.
Haxel drifted back to me, her wings opening. I realized the Houck had extinguished their personal glow so that we could better appreciate what was coming—courtesy on a scale appropriate to the view.
“You must have questions,” she said.
I forced myself to speak. “I assume this is your galaxy?”
“No. You behold a galaxy of galaxies, one of which is yours.”
My breath caught and Sunny’s hand tightened. I found myself whispering. “You mean…we’re looking at the universe?”
Haxel sang a chord of four or five notes at once before answering. “If by universe you mean all that is, where could we be positioned at this moment? No non-Houck language of which we are aware has a term for the phenomenon we witness. Would you care to invent one or invest a human word with this specific meaning?”
“Spindle,” my wife shot back as though she’d been waiting her whole life for this question. “Not only the shape, it’s got threads coming off.”
“An apt choice,” Haxel said, and I nodded in agreement, gazing at the cosmic Spindle with new eyes. “We will now expand the image.”
At this new magnification, I couldn’t begin to fathom the complexities. Those eerie suns that had puzzled me weren’t stars, they were entire galaxies: incredibly intricate maelstroms of effulgence, some more bizarrely configured than seemed probable. What I’d thought might be faceted stars were star clusters. The magnitude of all this made it hard to believe that my vision could encompass such a thing. Its beauty seemed to expand the more I gazed as if it was feeding my soul, growing my capacity to appreciate beauty.
Haxel wasn’t done. “Are you ready, Doctor, to see more of them?”
“More Spindles?”
“Do you perceive, as I do, any distant lights?”
“No.”
“I hear them,” Gara volunteered. “They are faint.”
“I expect so, good Vithy. Observe, Doctor. We will now apply extreme enlargement and image adjustment.”
Suddenly, the glory expanded a thousandfold. The supra-celestial object, what I’d thought of two minutes ago as the universe, shrank to provide room for hundreds more. Their luminous complexities related to the first one we’d seen, but a few were twisted into helical structures or bent into rings. The prior scene had been too tremendous for me to fully appreciate. Now I needed a major upgrade in my conception of “big.” It was impossible to take in more than a fragment of the visual symphony displayed before me, yet even that fragment filled me with … I don’t have words. Everything blurred for a moment, maybe from tears. Here was a glimpse of divinity beyond anything I could imagine.
Many, perhaps most humans have shared an experience: gazing up at a starry sky, feeling smaller than small, a grain of sand on an infinite beach. So you’d think my current view would’ve shrunk my self-perception to subatomic size in that same infinitesimal grain.
Instead, my emotions ran backward. This, I thought with a sudden joy surprisingly close to patriotic pride, is the magnificence I am part of.
A white circle appeared around a Spindle above and to the right of the original one. “We Houck evolved in a galaxy within this formation.” From another galaxy, all right, in another universe. “Doctor, you may feel overwhelmed by this revelation. So I must ask, are you ready to learn of our dilemma?”
“Go...ahead.” Truly, I needed something to bring me, well, down to earth.
“Do these Spindles remind you of anything on your world? Something small.”
“You mean, um, like a chandelier?”
“Far smaller and organic.”
What was Haxel getting at? All the hours I’d spent gawking out my office window brought a few bioluminescent creatures to mind, but no group of diatoms or jellyfish came close to resembling these cosmic fireworks. Talk about being lost at sea.
“Any more hints?”
“I had a reason for declaring your wife’s use of the word ‘Spindle’ apt. Consider your specific field of expertise.”
I frowned, baffled. While I’d had some long and skinny patients, none of them…
“Aren’t there brain cells with that name?” Sunny suggested.
I nodded. “True, and other kinds of spindle cells. But spindle neurons are infinitely simpler than what we’re looking at, they’re—” I raised a finger and tried to draw a shape in the air—“like super skinny trees and they don’t light up like the ultimate Christmas tree.”
“Ours do,” Haxel stated.
I looked at her, wishing she had a face that I could at least try to read. “Houck brains have axons and dendrites, and they light up?”
“We possess equivalents. Such forms evolve from purpose and most intelligent species possess similar mechanisms. Do you understand the function of your spindle neurons?”
“I should.” One undergraduate biology professor I’d had referred to them as “cell-phone cells,” a joke that would be met by blank stares from today’s DM-spoiled students. “They’re needed for long-distance neuron-to-neuron communication, that’s why they only appear in Earth’s bigger-brained—wait!”
“You all right, Al?” Sunny noticed my little wobble.
I’d made a conceptual leap so big it seemed to carry me from one universe to another. “Little dizzy. It’ll pass.”
I focused on Haxel. “Do you Houck believe,” I asked carefully, “that Spindles are cosmic brain cells communicating with each other?”
“No. We are convinced they are meant to communicate but currently isolated. We believe that the purpose of life, our purpose, is to assist the Spindles to reach out to each other, thus producing a unified universal consciousness.”
I’d been out-leaped! “That’s, um, quite an idea. How would you expect the Spindles to reach out? Not using matter, I assume. And what makes you think they aren’t...already communing?”
“We anticipate a sharing of forces, but our exhaustive tests have found no significant degree of energy exchange. Nor any force traversing the void beyond standard radiations.”
She waited patiently as I tried to think. “What about some energy form you don’t know about? Or maybe messages … teleport between Spindles the way your ships do.”
Haxel’s wings briefly flared to a startling incandescence. “You justify our choosing you! But these ideas are long familiar to us. We cannot rule out unknown forces, but doubt they exist considering how deeply we have studied the folds and flows of nature. As to your second suggestion, we have identified fundamental characteristics unique to each Spindle, imprinted on all its energy and matter. Any exchange would have carried traces of foreign characteristics. We have discovered none.”
“Okay. That thing you said about looking for forces ‘traversing the void.’ You meant energy discharged from Spindles?”
“I did.”
“What sort of discharge could carry enough information?” Peeps would’ve said a spiritual one.
“Common waveforms such as light travel far too slowly to network a practical universal mind. Our search therefore has focused on higher-order behaviors primed for extra-dimensional transitions.”
Those words slowly traversed the void between my ears, and somehow evoked for me the image of a stone skipping on a pond, bouncing through another dimension and coming out ahead of where it should’ve been. I shook my head and could’ve sworn my brain rattled. “I’d love to learn more about this, and I thank you with all my heart for bringing us here, but maybe I’m forgetting the main point. You mentioned a problem you had and a solution. What, exactly, do you want me to judge?”
Haxel opened her wings wide and the ring of silent Houck surrounding us glided closer. “Us. Specifically a logical conclusion we have reached. We are the oldest species we know of, and the most prolific in population and technology, but we recognize that perhaps our greatest asset, our ability to reach total consensus, limits our objectivity. We have, over the last terrestrial millennia, come to a painful decision we must make but dared not proceed without outside validation.”
“You wanted a second opinion.”
“We wanted every worthwhile outside opinion possible for us to gather in a reasonable time.”
My throat felt dry enough to crack. I forced myself to ask, “What’s this decision?”
“A most significant…anniversary approaches.” Haxel appeared to be sidestepping the question, which now struck me as a fine idea. “It has been almost exactly one grand unit, about seventeen million years in your terms, since we began our quest to link the Spindles. In that time, we have explored so many galaxies, stimulating the development of life and encouraging the growth of intelligence, that we have lost count. Our entire race has participated in this project. Do you see our problem now?”
I hoped not. “You think you’ve failed?”
“We would prefer failure to what we have come to believe. With failure, future success might be possible.”
“Please, just tell me.”
“We Houck are simply incapable of producing the great awakening. Our true calling, which we have long misunderstood, was to seed the galaxies with sentient life and then step aside to allow others to complete the final task.”
I stared at her, fear condensing into a heavy ball in my stomach. “What do you mean ‘step aside’?”
“An evolutionary principle is at work. Just as emptiness provides the crucial space for all existence—”
I got it but hated it. “You think the right species can’t appear until yours is gone.”
“Through long observation, we have deduced that reality contains, on a pan-cosmic scale, an equivalent to ecological niches. What species can evolve to fill an ecological niche when it is already fully occupied by another?”
This sounded well north of crazy to me, but it wasn’t what I believed that counted. “Are you telling me you Houck plan to commit suicide, hoping a more capable species will take over?” Please, God, let me be wrong!
“We do not intend instant suicide but will cease reproducing. Our life spans are longer than yours, although brief compared to some. In four of your centuries, we will be gone, and the ecological vacuum will soon be filled.”
I felt too cold to sweat, but that didn’t stop me. “Can’t you simply give up trying to link the Spindles? Why let yourselves die out?”
“Future generations could forget our insight, see the need, and resume the futile work. And our sheer numbers preclude new candidate species evolving on the billion worlds we currently inhabit. There are trillions of us, Doctor.”
Calm down, Al; trillions of lives aren’t resting on your shoulders. If only I could’ve believed it. “So that’s the decision you expect me to judge?”
“What we ask of all jurors is to seek a compelling reason to abandon that decision. If no such reason manifests, we will consider our reasoning validated.”
“Wait. You said you’d return us to Earth in a week.” If my voice hadn’t gone so hoarse, I would’ve been yelling. “You’ve been trying to connect universes for millions of years and expect your jury to come up with anything useful in a week?”
“We have vowed to restore all jurors to their home worlds before the deadline we have set. Our transportation resources are great, but some returns will involve complexities. Therefore we must dissolve the jury sooner than one of your weeks to keep our promise. If no flaw in our logic is found, we shall sterilize ourselves at the completion of the grand unit. You have two days to ponder.”
“That’s not …” There were so many things it wasn’t, such as sane or fair, that I didn’t know where to start.
Haxel continued. “We recognize the brevity of the time allotted and have compensated by assembling many jurors. Behold our fleet.”
Alien starships appeared on our window to reality, hundreds of them, some barely dots and several so large, presumably close, that I could distinguish their shapes. They resembled bettas, Siamese fighting fish, so exactly that I wouldn’t have put them in the same tank.
“We’re inside a ship like those?” I asked.
“Yes. Each vessel contains multiple judges, each from a different world. After the experiment is concluded I shall tell you the exact number if you wish, but we believe it crucial that you feel neither overly responsible nor free of responsibility. Likewise we dare answer no further questions you may have concerning our dilemma. We will now adjourn and allow you to begin your contemplations.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
As we followed Haxel back to our suites, I felt numb from my skin inwards. No matter how many “jurors” shared my burden, part of the responsibility belonged to me, and I had a truly disturbing idea about what was really happening here.
I figured the Houck had through their faith in this cosmic mind concept…faithed themselves into a tight corner, felt obligated to seek a way out, but didn’t believe one existed. I suspected they’d gathered this jury for symbolic reasons rather than practical ones. Good luck getting a solution from me considering my limited mind and magnificent ignorance.
“Your hand is like ice,” Sunny murmured. I hadn’t even realized we were holding hands.
I couldn’t risk glancing at her for fear that the ice around my heart, the only thing holding me together right now, might crack. But I knew she was looking at me with pity. Probably everyone was doing the same except for my boy and Gara, who’d be listening to me with pity.
“You won’t fail,” Sunny said. “You never do.”
Even her faith in me didn’t help, not much anyway. Besides, failure has gradations; there’ve been plenty of times when I haven’t succeeded. But I’d never been responsible for untold trillions of future lives.
Back in our quarters, I asked Haxel if her people had considered reducing their population, maybe pulling back to a few thousand planets. Since she’d declared that question time was over, I figured she wouldn’t answer but she did.
“Knowing our nature, we rejected that possibility. Our descendants would be sure to repopulate our galaxy and resume the work. All this would happen again. Also, whatever refuge worlds we chose might include the very one that otherwise would evolve the needed species.”
So it was all or nothing, and I felt sick.
My mind churned all that day and night, but the only result was mental froth. I couldn’t eat and sure as hell couldn’t sleep. I kept asking the group for ideas and everyone tried to help, tried hard, but the only result was zero of the wordy kind. The team effort had one positive result: Gara’s hostility toward Deal seemed to ease. Both were my friends, united in concern for Dr. Mess.
The second day, Gara posed a useful question. “I hear that you are desperate to preserve the Houck and agree that their absence would leave all existence poorer. Yet how can you be certain they are mistaken?”
That forced me to reassess. “I’m not. But I’m also not buying a single share of their beliefs. Honestly, this business of hooking up universes strikes me as—as a case of wishful thinking on crack. Seems to me their spiritual convictions are battling their species survival instinct and winning, but barely.”
“That is an opinion confusing. Please explain.”
“Look—I mean listen—obviously they’re hoping us aliens will find some reason for them not to give up, and they’ve spent incredible energy collecting us all. That’s survival instinct doing its thing. But now that they’ve finally laid out the problem, they won’t allow us enough time to have a chance of finding an answer, assuming there is one.”
“Haxel claimed a multitude of intellects are at work.”
“So a multitude of minds won’t have enough time.”
“Perhaps some operate with speed great.”
“I sure hope so.”
I can’t remember a more miserable day. Even Alex caught my mood and replaced playing with moping. All too often, I’d catch myself feeling resentful of everyone and everything, loved ones included, and it became a struggle not to snap at the innocent. By artificial evening, I’d honed self-pity to a sharp point and got ready for a second sleepless night. Sunny offered to rub my back, not a task she enjoys because it hurts her hands, and I said no thanks. She, at least, could get some rest.
Sunny had other ideas. “Al, I’ve been thinking about what you told me when you got back from your first visit with the Traders.”
“What about it?” My snarling tone made me wince. Dr. Gracious at your service.
She ignored my rudeness. “You said that you couldn’t get anywhere in treating those alien patients until you stopped telling yourself the job was impossible.”
“It seemed impossible. Hell, it would’ve been impossible if the Traders hadn’t misdiagnosed them. I see where you’re going, but this situation is different. Coming up with a solution here really is impossible.”
“Perhaps. But, Al, I’ve never seen you this … agitated. If you’re wrong, if there’s an answer, how could you find it in the state you’re in? What do you always tell me to do when I have a hard problem? Work on it, then forget about it, rinse and repeat. Let your subconscious handle the load.”
