Starplex

Chapter XVI

Rissa, Hek, and the rest of the alien-communications team continued to exchange messages with the darmat they’d dubbed Cat’s Eye. The conversation became increasingly fluid as new words were added to the translation database, or old words had their meanings refined. When Keith next came onto the bridge, Rissa was in the middle of an apparently philosophic conversation with the giant being. The usual alpha-shift crew was on duty, except that the ExOps station was vacant: Rhombus was off doing something else, and his position had been slaved to a dolphin floating in the open pool on the starboard side of the bridge.

“We have been unaware of your existence,” Rissa said into the microphone stalk rising from her console. “We knew a large amount of invisible matter was out there, because of the gravitational effects, but we didn’t know it was alive.”

“Two types of substance,” replied the darmat in that French accent PHANTOM had assigned to him.

“Yes,” said Rissa. She looked up and waved a greeting at Keith as he took his seat next to her.

“Not react sharply,” said the Cat’s Eye. “Only gravity the same.”

“That’s correct,” said Rissa. The all-encompassing hologram showed an enhanced view of Cat’s Eye in front of the cluster of workstations.

“Most like us,” said the darmat.

“The vast majority of all matter is like you, yes,” replied Rissa. “Ignore you.”

“You’ve ignored us?”

“Insignificant.”

“Were you aware that part of our type of substance was alive?”

“No. Not occur to look for life on planets. So small you are.”

“We wish to have a relationship with you,” said Rissa.

“Relationship?”

“For mutual benefit. One plus one equals two. You plus us equals more than two.”

“Understand. More than the sum of the parts.”

Rissa smiled. “Exactly.”

“Relationship sensible.”

“Do you have a word for those with whom you have mutually beneficial relationships?”

“Friends,” said the darmat, PHANTOM translating the word the first time it had been received. “We call them friends.”

“We are friends,” said Rissa.

“Yes.”

“The kind of material you’re made out of—the material we call dark matter—is all of it alive?”

“No. Only tiny fraction.”

“But you say there has been living dark matter for a very long time?”

“Since the beginning.”

“Beginning of what?”

“Of—all the stars combined.”

“Of the totality of everything? We call that the universe.”

“Since the beginning of the universe.”

“That’s an interesting point right there,” said Jag, sitting on Keith’s left. “The idea that the universe had a beginning… it did, of course, but how does it know that? Ask it about that.”

“What was the universe like in the beginning?” said Rissa into the mike.

“Compressed,” said the darmat. “Small beyond small. One place, no time.”

“The primordial atom,” said Jag. “Fascinating. It’s right, but I wonder how such a creature would deduce that?”

“They communicate by radio,” said Lianne, turning around at InOps to face Jag. “They probably reasoned it out the same way we did: from the cosmic microwave background and the redshifting of radio noise from distant galaxies.”

Jag grunted.

Rissa continued her dialogue: “You have told us that neither you personally, Cat’s Eye, nor this group of darmats is anywhere near that old. How do you know that darmat life existed all the way back to the beginning.”

“Had to,” replied the darmat.

Jag barked dismissively. “Philosophy,” he said. “Not science. They just want to believe that.”

“We have not existed nearly that long,” said Rissa into the microphone stalk. “We have not found any evidence for life of any type made out of our kind of matter that is more than four billion years old.” PHANTOM converted the time expression into something the darmat could understand.

“As said earlier, you are insignificant.”

Jag barked at PHANTOM. “Query: How was the translation for ‘insignificant’ derived?”

“Mathematically,” said the computer in the appropriate language into each individual’s earpiece. “We established that the difference between 3.7 and 4.0 was ‘significant,’ but that the difference between 3.99 and 4.00 was ‘insignificant.’ ”

Jag looked at Rissa. “So in this context the word might convey a different sense. It might mean something metaphoricai—a ‘late arrival’ could be equated with insignificance, for instance.”

Thor looked over his shoulder at the Waldahud and grinned. “Don’t like the idea of being dismissed out of hand, eh?”

“Don’t be abrasive, human. It’s simply that we have to be careful when generalizing the use of alien words. And besides, perhaps he’s referring to the signaling probe. At less than five meters in length, it could indeed be termed insignificant.”

Rissa nodded and spoke into the mike. “When you say we are insignificant, are you referring to our size?”

“Not size of speaking part. Not size of part that ejected speaking part.”

“So much for outsmarting him,” said Thor, grinning. “He knows that the signaling probe came from this ship.” Rissa covered the mike with her hand; the gesture was as good a signal as any to PHANTOM to temporarily halt transmission. “It doesn’t matter, I guess.” She removed her hand and spoke again to Cat’s Eye.

“Are we insignificant because we haven’t been around as long as you have?”

“Not a question of time length; a question of time absolute. We here from beginning; you not. By definition, we significant, you not. Obviously so.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Keith, good-naturedly. “The good guys are never first, only better.”

Rissa covered the mike and looked at him. “Regardless, I think we should steer clear of philosophy until we’re more comfortable with each other. I don’t want to accidentally give offense and cause him to clam up.”

Keith nodded.

Rissa spoke into the mike again. “Presumably there are other communities of darmats.”

“Billions of communities.”

“Do you interact with them?”

“Yes.”

“Your radio signals are not powerful, and are close to the frequency of the microwave background radiation. They would not be perceptible over a great distance.”

“True.”

“Then how do you interact with other darmat communities?”

“Radio-one only for local talk. Radio-two for communication between communities.”

Lianne turned to Rissa. “Is he saying what I think he’s saying? That the darmats are natural transmitters of hyperspace radio?”

“Let’s find out,” said Rissa: She faced the mike again. “Radio-one travels at the same speed as light, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Radio-two travels faster than light, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus,” said Keith. “If they use hyperspace radio, how come we’ve never encountered their signals before?”

“There are an infinite number of quantized hyperspace levels,” said Lianne. “None of the Commonwealth races has had hyperspace radio for more than fifty years, and the whole Commonwealth uses only about eight thousand quantized levels; it’s quite possible that we’ve never happened to key into one of the ones the darmats use.” She turned her gaze to Rissa. “The way we do hyperspace radio requires an enormous amount of energy. It would be well worth pursuing this topic. They may have a method of doing it that takes a lot less power.”

Rissa nodded. “We use a kind of radio-two, as well. Will you tell us more about how yours works?”

“Tell all,” replied Cat’s Eye. “But little to tell. We think one way, thought is private. We think another way, thought is transmitted on radio-one. We think a third, harder way, and thought is transmitted on radio-two.”

Keith laughed. “It’s like asking a human to explain how speech works. We just do it, that’s all. It’s—”

“Forgive me for interrupting, Dr. Lansing,” said PHANTOM, “but you asked me to remind you and Dr. Cervantes of your 14:00 appointment.”

Keith’s face fell.

“Damn,” he said. “Damn.” He turned to Rissa. “It’s time.”

She nodded. “PHANTOM, please get Hek down here to continue the dialogue with Cat’s Eye.”

As soon as Hek had arrived, they both rose from their chairs and left the room.

Keith and Rissa exited from the elevator and walked the short distance to the oversized black door with the giant fluorescent orange “20” painted on it. The locking bolts pulled aside. The noise they made had always been faintly familiar to Keith, but this time he finally placed it: it was just like the sound of a rifle being cocked in an old-time western movie.

Most doors aboard ship split down the middle with the two panels moving into pockets on either side, but this heavy one slid as one piece to the left—safety demanded there be no seams or weak points in the seal.

Rissa gasped. Keith felt his jaw go slack.

There were well over a hundred Ibs in the docking bay, lined up in neat rows—like a parking lot filled with wheelchairs. “PHANTOM, how many are there?” Keith said softly.

“Two hundred and nine, sir,” replied the computer. “The entire ship’s complement of Integrated Bioentities.”

Rissa shook her head slightly. “She said only her closest friends would attend.”

“Well,” said Keith, stepping into the room, “Boxcar is very personable. I guess all the Ibs aboard consider her a close friend.”

There were six other humans present, all members of Rissa’s life-sciences staff. There was also one lone Waldahud, whom Keith couldn’t quite place. Keith glanced at his watch: 13:59:47. No doubt whatever was going to happen would begin on time.

“Thank you all for coming,” said Boxcar’s voice, over Keith’s implant. It was easy to spot her: hers was the only web flashing. It was eerie, in a way. PHANTOM’s translation was piped into his left acoustic nerve; the other ear heard nothing—even a room this size full of raucous Ibs would be dead silent.

Boxcar was fifteen meters from where Keith and Rissa were standing. In front of the plated space door, PHANTOM was projecting a giant hologram of Boxcar, so that all the Ibs could see her flashing web. Something strange, there: the strands of her web were bright green. Keith had never seen any Ib’s web that color before.

He turned to Rissa, but she must have guessed his question. “It represents a deeply emotional state,” she said. “Boxcar is choked up over the show of support from her people.”

Boxcar’s web flashed again. The translation said, “The whole and the parts—of one, and of them all. The gestalt has resonances on the macro scale and the micro. It binds.”

Obviously, Boxcar was addressing her fellow Ibs. Keith thought he got the gist of what she was saying—something about being part of the Ib community having meant as much to her as being a community of parts herself. Keith prided himself on his acceptance of aliens, his run-ins with Jag notwithstanding. But this was all a little too surreal for him; he knew he was about to watch someone die, but the emotions he should be feeling hadn’t yet come to the surface. Rissa, on the other hand, had that look she got when trying not to cry. She and Boxcar had been closer than he’d known, Keith realized.

“The road is clear,” concluded Boxcar. She rolled several dozen meters away from the others, out into the center of the bay.

“Why’s she doing that?” whispered Keith.

Rissa shrugged her shoulders, but PHANTOM replied into both of their implants: “During discorporation, components—especially wheels—may panic, and seek to bond with any other Ib in the area. It is customary to move far enough away so that if such a thing is attempted, there’s plenty of time to react.”

Keith nodded slightly.

And then it began. In the middle of the bay was a standard Ib comfort mound. Boxcar rolled over it so that the hump supported her frame from underneath. Her web—visible in PHANTOM’s giant hologram—turned an almost electric purple, another color Keith had never seen before. The light points at the web’s countless intersections grew brighter and brighter, a dense constellation map with every star a nova. Then, one by one, the lights winked out. It took perhaps two minutes for them all to go dark.

Boxcar’s frame tipped forward, and her web slid off to the bay floor, landing in a loose pile. Keith had thought the web was already dead, but it arched up sharply, as if a fist were pushing it up from underneath. The strands had now lost all their color; they looked like thick nylon fishing line.

After a moment, though, the web finally did expire, collapsing into a heap. Boxcar was now blind and deaf (she had once had a magnetic sense, too, but that had been neutralized through nanosurgery when she’d left her home-world; it caused severe disorientation aboard spaceships).

Next, Boxcar’s wheels disengaged from the axles on the frame. Wheel disengaging wasn’t unusual in and of itself. The system that allowed nutrients to pass from the axle into each wheel didn’t provide enough food for the wheels, and in their native environment they would periodically separate from the rest of the gestalt for feeding. Thick tendrils, similar to the Ib’s bundle of manipulatory ropes, popped out of the sides of the wheels, preventing them from falling over (or righting them if they did).

Almost immediately after it separated, the left wheel tried to rejoin the frame. Just as PHANTOM said it might, it panicked when it realized that little bumps had risen up all around the axle’s circumference, preventing it from reconnecting. It rolled around the bay, the grabbing projections around its rim extending and retracting at a great rate. The wheel had a few vision sensors of its own, and as soon as it caught sight of the huge collection of Ibs, it made a beeline for the closest. That Ib spun away, avoiding the wheel. One of the others—Butterfly, Keith assumed, the one Ib doctor on board—surged forward, a manipulatory rope extended, a silver-and-black medical stunner held at its tip. The stunner touched the wheel, and it stopped moving. It stood for several seconds, then the rootlike appendages coming out of its sides seemed to go soft, and the wheel toppled onto its side.

Keith turned his attention back to the center of the bay. Boxcar’s bundle of ropes had slid to the floor, near the discarded sensor web. They were reaching up to the frame and disengaging the blue pump from the central green pod, and gently lifting the pump to the floor. Keith could see the pump’s large central breathing orifice cycling through its usual four-step sequence of open, stretch, compress, and close. After about forty seconds, though, the sequence started to get distorted as the pump seemed to lose track of what it was doing. The orifice movements became jumbled—opening, then immediately compressing; trying to stretch wide after closing. There was a small gasping sound—the only sound in the entire bay. Finally the pump stopped moving.

All that was left was the pod, sitting on the saddle-shaped frame.

Keith whispered to Rissa: “How long can the pod survive without the pump?”

Rissa turned to him, her eyes wet. She blinked several times, dislodging tears. “A minute,” she said at last. “Perhaps two.”

Keith reached over and squeezed her hand.

Everything was still for about three minutes. The pod expired quietly, without movement or sound—although somehow, apparently, the Ibs knew when it was gone, and, as one, they began to roll out of the bay. All their webs were dark; not a word was passing between them. Keith and Rissa were the last to leave. Butterfly would return shortly, Keith knew, to take care of jettisoning Boxcar’s remains into space.

As they walked out of the bay, Keith thought about his own future. He was going to live a long, long time, apparently. He wondered whether billions of years from now he’d be able to escape the mistakes of his own past.

They couldn’t sleep that night, of course. Boxcar’s death had upset Rissa, and Keith was wrestling with his own demons. They lay side by side in their bed, wide-awake, Rissa staring at the dark ceiling, Keith looking at the faint red spot on the wall made by the light seeping around the plastic card he used to cover his clock face.

Rissa spoke—just one word. “If…”

Keith rolled onto his back. “Pardon?”

She was quiet for a time. Keith was about to prod her again, when she said, very softly, “If you don’t remember how to make a u or an apostrophe, will you remember me—remember us?” She rolled over, looked at him. “You’re going to live another ten billion years. I can’t begin to comprehend that.”

“It’s… mind-numbing,” said Keith, shaking his head against the pillow. He, too, was quiet for a time. Then: “People always fantasize about living forever. Somehow, ‘forever’ seems less daunting than putting a specific date on it. I could deal with immortality, but contemplating the specific notion of being alive ten billion years from now… I just can’t make sense of it.”

“Ten billion years,” said Rissa again, shaking her head. “Earth’s sun will long be dead, Earth will be dead.” A beat. “I will be dead.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. If it is life prolongation, then surely it’s because of your studies here on Starplex. After all, why else would I have ended up as one of the recipients of the process? Maybe we’re both alive ten billion years from now.”

More silence.

“And together?” said Rissa, at last.

Keith exhaled noisily. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine any of it.” He sensed he was saying the wrong thing. “But… but if I’m to face that much of a future, I would want it to be with you.”

“Would you?” said Rissa, at once. “Would we have anything left to explore, to learn about each other, after all that time?”

“Maybe… maybe it’s not corporeal existence,” said Keith. “Maybe my consciousness is transferred into a machine. Wasn’t there a cult on New New York that wanted to do that—copy human brains into computers? Or maybe… maybe all of humanity becomes one giant mind, but the individual psyches can still be tapped. That would be…”

“Would be less frightening that the concept of personally living another ten billion years. In case you haven’t done the math yet, that would mean that so far, you’ve only lived one two-hundred-millionth of the age you’re going to become.” She paused and sighed.

“What?” asked Keith.

“Nothing.”

“No, you’re upset about something.”

Rissa was quiet for about ten seconds. “Well, it’s just that your current midlife crisis has been hard enough to live with. I’d hate to see what kind of stunts you’re going to pull when you turn five billion.”

Keith didn’t know what to say. Finally, he settled on a laugh. It sounded hollow to him, forced.

Quiet again—long enough that he thought perhaps she’d at last fallen asleep. But he couldn’t sleep himself. Not yet, not with these thoughts going through his head.

“Dulcinea?” he whispered softly—so softly that if she were already asleep he hopefully wouldn’t wake her.

“Hmm?”

Keith swallowed. Maybe he should leave the issue alone, but… “Our anniversary is coming up.”

“Next week,” said the voice in the darkness.

“Yes,” said Keith. “It’ll be twenty years, and—”

“Twenty wonderful years, honey. You’re always supposed to include the adjective.”

Another forced laugh. “Sorry, you’re right. Twenty wonderful years.” He paused. “I know that we’re planning to renew our wedding vows that day.”

A small edge to Rissa’s voice. “Yes?”

“Nothing. No, forget I said anything. It has been a wonderful twenty years, hasn’t it?”

Keith could just make out her face in the darkness. She nodded, then looked at him, meeting his eyes, trying to see beyond them, see the truth, see what was bothering him. And then it came to her, and she rolled onto her side, facing away from him. “It’s okay,” she said at last.

“What is?”

And she spoke the final words that passed between them that night. “It’s okay,” she said, “if you don’t want to say, ‘for as long as we both shall live.’ ”

Keith sat at his workstation on the bridge. Holograms of three humans and a dolphin hovered above the station’s rim. In his peripheral vision, he was aware of one of the bridge doors opening and Jag waddling in. The Waldahud didn’t go to his own workstation, though. Instead he stood in front of Keith’s and waited, in what seemed a state of some agitation, while Keith finished the conference he was conducting with the holographic heads. When they’d logged off, Keith looked up at Jag.

“As you know, the darmats have been moving,” said Jag. “I’m frankly surprised at their agility. They seem to work together, each sphere playing off its own gravitational and repulsive forces against the others to move the whole community cooperatively. Anyway, in doing so, they’ve completely reconfigured themselves, so that individual darmats that we couldn’t clearly observe before are now at the periphery of the assemblage. I’ve made some predictions about which darmat might next reproduce, and I’d like to test my theory. For that, I want you to move Starplex to the far side of the dark-matter field.”

“PHANTOM, schematic local space,” said Keith.

A holographic representation appeared in midair between Keith and Jag. The darmats had moved around to the opposite side of the green star, so that Starplex, the shortcut, the star, and the darmat community were pretty much arranged in a straight line.

“If we move to the far side of the darmat field, we’ll be out of view of the shortcut,” said Keith. “We might miss seeing a watson come through. Can’t you just put a probe there?”

“My prediction is based on very minute mass concentrations. I need to use either our deck-one or deck-seventy hyperscope to make my observations.”

Keith considered. “All right.” He tapped a key on his console and the usual holograms of Thor and Rhombus popped into being. “Rhombus, please check with everyone who is currently doing external scanning. Find out when the soonest we can move the ship without interrupting their work will be. Thor, at that time take us to the opposite side of the dark-matter field, positioning us at coordinates Jag will supply you with.”

“Serving is the greatest pleasure,” said Rhombus.

“Bob’s your uncle,” said Thor.

Jag moved his head up and down, imitating the human gesture. Waldahudin never said thank you, but Keith thought the pig looked inordinately pleased.