Part 1 (2/2)

Killeen paused and said curtly,--Yeasay?-- --We can hole up inside the cloud for a while. Rest up. Get our bearings.-- Killeen shook his head furiously.--Naysay. Resupply, that's all.

There's True Center. Look at it! We're so close now.- Toby peered ahead, through dusty clumps already wreathing the hull of Argo as the great s.h.i.+p headed into the recesses of the giant cloud. At max mag he could make out the exact center of the galaxy. White-hot. Beautiful.

Dangerous.

And his father, he now saw, could never be deflected from that goal.

Not by starvation. Not by deadly risks. Not by the weight of past sorrow.

They would fly straight into the gnawing center of all this gaudy, swirling chaos. On an impossible voyage. Looking for something, with no clear idea of what it might be. , n this is what we were born to Killeen grinned broadly.--C mo , son, do. We'll go onward. Inward. There's all our Family's past here, somewhere.

We'll find out what happened, who we are.----Crew doesn't like that kind of talk, Dad.-He frowned.--How come?----This is a scary place.-- --So? They haven't seen the glory of it, haven't really thought it through. When the time comes, they'll follow --We're running for our lives, Dad.-- --So?--Killeen grinned, a jaunty human gesture amid the wash of galactic light.--We always have been.-- 7.Particle Storm The carapace glides like a hunting hornet.Its thorax is of high-impact matte ceramic. Bone-white lattices mimic ribs. Storage balloons inflate like lungs as it exchanges plasma charge. Slow rises, fluttering exhales.This is illusion. Its body is a treasury of past designs, free of weight, remembering nothing of planets. Evolution is independent of the substrate, whether organic or metallic or plasmic. Its design follows cool engineerings now encased in habit. Function converges on form. Tubular rods of invisible tension, struts like statements.Elsewhere along its expanses, gray pods stud the shooting angularities of it. Scooped curves in smudged silver. Tapering lines blend, uniting skewed axes. None of these geometries would be possible beneath the dictates of gravity.It torques. Grave, careful. Movement is a luxury, scarcely necessary when what truly stirs is data.It has little kinesthetic sense. Instead it lives amid encoded interior universes. Webs, logics, filters. Perceptions are racing patterns flung between the s.h.i.+fting sands of stars and lives.Data pours through these s.p.a.ces. Digital rivers fork into rivulets, seeking receptors. Stuttering, layer-encoded, as endless as the rain of protons.Like a feverish need the data-streams fall here on opaque t.i.tanium sh.e.l.ls.

But it does not sense the particle torrent that flails uselessly at ma.s.sive s.h.i.+elds: layers of stressed conglomerate cismetal, revolving.Ma.s.s is brute. Inside the crystalline ramparts, there is nothing which seems like a machine. No obvious movement, no sliding mechanical torques. Here the essence is static, eternal, a fulcrum of fixed forces.Thought is infinitely tenuous. The inner mind flits down tiny stalks of dark diamond, fas.h.i.+oned from the cores of ancient supernovas. Codes race in fine sprays of polarized nuclei, dancing forever in buoyant fields. Electrons pinch and snake, bearing luminescent ideas.From the distance come spectral streamers of a red giant, laboring toward supernova. Plasma casts ruby shafts across the slowly revolving planes. The tossing, frenzied flush traces out the worn rims of craters. Random impacts, long forgotten. Pocks and scratches cross the ma.s.sive shanks.

These tell strange stories, unreadable now.Death crowns the spiral spine: antennae tinged in jarring yellow. They can slice through the galactic hiss here, stab electromagnetic needles through prey light-minutes away.For the moment it converses. Its interior selves are free of the swallowing mandates of self-preservation. Their task is to think long. Within them, data dances.

8.

The anthology intelligence speaks to others far distributed along the galactic plane--though the separation into (self, here) and (other, there) is a convention, a brute simplification for this slowly revolving angularity.

Something like an argument congeals. Sliding perspectives of digital nuance. Binary oppositions are illusory here--you/I, point/counter--but they do shape issues, in the way that a frame defines a painting.

It begins. Language lances across the storming ma.s.ses that intervene, the vagrant pa.s.sing weather. Cuts. Penetrates.Semi-sentients should not preoccupy us.They must. They are an unresolved issue.You term them ”primates”?Of the cla.s.s of dreaming vertebrates.I/You consider them irrelevant.The underlying issues still vex.They are nothing! Debris, motes.

They approach. Little time remainsbefore they will near the Center.We/You have eradicated humans virtually everywhere. Only small bands remain. Our protracted deliberations, well recorded in history, demand completion of this ancient task.This policy is e>/-*-x< old.=”” we/you=”” should=”” reinspect=”” it.they=”” are=”” nearly=”” extinct.=”” press=”” on.their=”” extinction=”” seems=”” difficult=”” to=”” achieve.=”” they=”” persist.=”” this=”” suggests=”” weyou=”” reconsider=”” ourmy=””>

9.

They are vermin. Carbon-based evolution brings only low skills. They still communicate with each other linearly!Some would say that evolution works as equally upon youus as upon them.Nonsense. We You direct our changes. They cannot. This is the deep deficiency of chemical life.They were once able to alter their own imprintings. To write changes in their carbon kind.They lost it as weyou diminished them. Now they are the same as the unthinking forms, the animals--shaped by random forces.They were once important players here. WeYou should understand their threat to us before expunging them.Possibly they harbor information harmful to usyou--so say our most stable records.Those are sheltered against the Ma.s.s Eater's radiant storm and so should be well preserved.By its nature weyou cannot know what this hidden information is.Why ”by its nature”?There are many theories.Precisely. Does it not seem curious that something in ouryour makeup makes it somehow impossible for usyou to know what these humans carry? That such knowledge is 10.

blocked for us? A curious aspect of ourdeep programming.May carry. Such ancient records are suspect.WeYou cannot risk disbelievingthem.Long ago the philosopher I I resolved such questions. WeYou are imprisoned within our perception-s.p.a.ce.

There will always remain matters youwe cannot know.But if these matters affect ourselves?

Disquieting.Living with ambiguity is the nature of high intelligence. Still, to lessen uncertainty, weyou should exterminate the remaining bands.And lose their information?Very well--archive them first. I now point to this latest incursion--already it nears True Center.There may be risks in erasing them.Nonsense. YouWe have destroyed many such expeditions before.First, let scouts find them accurately.

The usual primate-hunter units will track them, perhaps inflict minor damage--one must give such lower forms some reward structure, remember.You/We advocate delay?No--cautious action. Remember that higher forms than us will judge 11.ouryour actions. Prudence demands care. Earlier events involving these primates, on two separate planets, have pointed toward some significant yet poorly defined role they play. They may carry information--and what are they, but information? Indeed, whatare we?--which can bring theattentions of minds above ours.

Very well, caution. But how?

A trap.

Part I

F^R P. NTI Q U I'l

I.

Techno-NomadsToby had barely gotten back inside the air lock and was shedding his suit when Cermo showed up. Toby wore nothing but shorts under his vacuum suit, and the s.h.i.+p felt colder than outside. He rummaged in his locker for his overalls, s.h.i.+vering, and Cermo said, ”Where you been?”

”Where's it look?”

The big man towered over Toby. Cermo had been called Cermothe-Slow in years past, but now was leaner and quicker. A broad grin seemed to divide his face in half with delighted antic.i.p.ation. ”Heard all the ruckus.

Cap'n found us somethin' to eat, right?”

”We'll see.”

”Doesn't change anything for you, though,” Cermo said with a sly chuckle. He was a big man with a soft-eyed, mirthful face, so the chuckle carried no malice.

”Whaf's that mean?”

”You're on maintenance detail today.”

”So? Okay, I'll check the biotanks, the usual.”

”Today's not usual.” Again the sly grin.

”What's wrong?”

”Sewage seals broke.”

”Again? No fair! They went out last time I was on maintenance, too.”

”Well then, you're an expert.” Cermo handed Toby a mop. ”Apply your know-how.”

The seals were always popping, because the pressure regulators had to be tuned just exactly right. Human waste was a vital ingredient in the biotanks. It had to be pressurized, filtered, and the final product flattened into squishy mats--which the farm teams spread around among the big bowl-shaped crop zones. The Argo was a long-voyage s.h.i.+p, designed to keep every drop of water, every sigh of air sealed tight inside its skin.

I 6.Easy to understand, hard to do. Most of the Argo crew were relatives, all that remained of Family Bishop. They came from Snowglade, a bleak world Toby remembered rather fondly. Toby was of the youngest generation of Family Bishop. That gave him the flexibility of being fresh and green, but the sour fact of the matter was that Bishops had few skill.s to help them run the Argo.

All Families had been techno-nomads, learning just enough to survive while they were on the move. Always running, dodging, staying ahead of mechs. Not that most mechs paid them any special attention. Humans at Galactic Center were more like rats in the walls, not major players in anything.

Argo was as friendly to its pa.s.sengers as a s.h.i.+p could be, a fine artifact from the High Arcology Era. Trouble was, its systems a.s.sumed the pa.s.sengers had educations that Family Bishop could only guess at.

Example: the sewage. Neither Cap'n Killeen nor Cermo nor anybody else had been able to make head or tail of the instructions for the pressure system.

It a.s.sumed something called the Perfect Gas Law, the instructions said. The foul stuff that actually flowed through the smooth, clear pipes was certainly not perfect, and it obeyed no law anybody ever heard of. It spewed out without provocation and often with what seemed to be insulting timing. Last week, a howling brown leak sprayed the Family when it was a.s.sembled for a wedding. That took a certain fine edge off the celebration.

Toby joined the other poor souls who had drawn maintenance this week. He breathed through his mouth but that helped only a while, until the smell got up into his head. His teacher Aspect, Isaac, spoke to him in his mind while he bent over, pus.h.i.+ng the foul stuff with a sponge brush.I have conferred with the most ancient records you carry in chip-library.

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