Across the Sea of Suns (16 page)

“Well, the big sweep we tried two days back—following on the Walmsley-Daffler discoveries—doesn’t seem to have paid off. Am I right?” Raised eyebrows, inquiring looks around the table. Nods. Nigel nodded, too, for indeed the men and women who swarmed over that volcanic zone had not learned anything more of importance. The EM “villages” were simple shelters and little more. Some of the caves held piles of artfully worked rock; others were bare, with only alcoves clogged with EM droppings to mark their use. In a few, elaborate designs were scratched into the walls and filled with scraps of superconducting stuff. To the EMs these might be art; just as easily, the complex spirals and jagged lines might be history, literature, or graffiti.

Ted segued smoothly into a summary of other missions on Isis surface. They were tracing the outline of a complex ecology, but there were still large holes to fill in. What happened to the ancient EM cities? Why were there no other semiconductor-type nervous systems in the Isis ecology?

“All very interesting,” Ted said mildly. “But to many of us”—his eyes swept the length of the table—“the standout puzzle is the two satellites. How did they get there? Are they all that is left of the EM technology? Why—”

“Look,” Nigel interrupted, “it’s clear where you’re headed. You want to pay a visit.”

“Well, you’re jumping the gun again, Nigel, but yes. We do.”

“That’s too flaming dangerous.”

“They’re ancient, Nigel. Spectrophotometry shows the artificial component of those satellites—the metals, any-way—were smelted and formed well over a million years ago.”

“Old doesn’t mean dead.”

“Nigel, I know what you’re angling for.” Ted smiled sympathetically, his manner becoming milder. Nigel wondered how much of it was a controlled response. “You want first contact. The EMs still don’t know we’re here, if our tricks have functioned adequately—I’m pretty sure your radio blanket notion has worked out, Bob—and I want to keep it that way. Our directives, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind anyone here, are to stay invisible until we fully understand the situation.”

“Pretty clear,” Bob said laconically.

“Until you inquire into the definition of ‘fully understand,’ perhaps so,” Nigel retorted. “But we’ve
seen
the EMs. They’ve tried to catch our attention already. And we don’t know bugger all about the satellites.”

Ted laced his fingers and turned his palms up, a diffuse gesture Nigel recognized as meaning
What are you trying to say?
with a hint of irritation, a sign all at the table would get, while simultaneously Ted said calmly, completely without any irked tone in his voice, “Surely a well-preserved artifact will tell us more about the high period of this civilization—”

“If it’s from here, yes.”

Ted’s eyes widened theatrically. “You think the Snark came from here? Or the
Marginis
wreck?”

“Of course not. However, in the absence of knowledge—”

“That absence is precisely why I feel—as does the majority of this panel, I take it—that we should keep our distance from the EMs for a while.” The section leaders around the table agreed with silent nods.

“They aren’t nearly as potentially dangerous to this mission,” Nigel said. “And they’re native life-forms. We have things in common, we
must
. Any opportunity for our kind of life to communicate—”

“Our kind?”

“The machine civilizations are out here somewhere, too.”

“Ummm.” Ted made a show of considering the point. “How prevalent do you think life is, Nigel?”

A sticky point. Isis was the sole source of artificial transmissions that astronomers had found in over half a century of cupping an ear to every conceivable part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Nigel paused a moment and then said, “Reasonably.”

“Oh? Why the radio silence, then? Except for Isis?”

“Ever been to a cocktail party where the person who’s unsure of himself babbles away? And everyone else keeps quiet?”

Ted smiled. “Lord protect me from analogies. The galaxy isn’t a cocktail party.”

Nigel smiled, too. He had no way of reversing the decision here, but he could show the flag. “Probably. But I think it’s not an open house, either.”

“Well, let’s knock on a door and see,” Ted replied.

Nigel found Nikka and Carlotta cooking an elaborate concoction at the apartment. They were peppering slivers of white meat and rolling them in scented oils. There were savories to fold in and each woman worked solemnly, deftly, the myriad small decisions provoking a phrase here, an extended deliberation there, all weaving a bond he knew well. Not the right moment to break in.

He volunteered to chop vegetables. He took out his intensity on onions and carrots and broccoli and had a cup of coffee. The first fruit of the “season” was in so he made a salad, following Carlotta’s directions, composing a light, spicy sesame oil for it. The first citrus had come ripe the day before, greeted by a little ritual. Prokofiev’s
Love for Three Oranges
had rolled over the witnessing crowd, echoing in the cavern. Someone had salted the clouds that formed on the axis, so that crimson and jade streamers coasted in ghostly straight lines overhead, up the spine of the ship.

Finally, at a lull he said, “I just heard the news.”

“Oh,” Nikka said, understanding.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d volunteered for the satellite mission?”

“Volunteer? I didn’t. I’m on the list for rotating assignments.”

“They thought it was better for morale,” Carlotta put in, “if we just let the personnel optimization program pick the mission crew. Fairer, too.”

“Oh, yes, we must be
fair
, mustn’t we? A fabulously stupid idea,” he said.

“Everybody’s
dying
to get out of the ship,” Carlotta said.

“It might well turn out precisely that way,” he said sourly.

Nikka said, “I thought it was better if I simply let the news come up as usual. I nearly told you before—”

“Well, then, nearly thank you.”

“It’s my chance to
do
something!”

“I don’t want you risking it.”

Nikka said defiantly, “I take my chances, just as you do.”

“You’ll be on the servo’d equipment, the manifest says.”

“Yes. Operating the mobile detectors.”

“How close to the satellite?”

“A few kilometers.”

“I don’t like it. Ted’s going ahead with this without thinking it through.”

Carlotta put down a whisk beater and said, “You can’t run Nikka’s life.”

He looked steadily at her. “And you cannot expect me not to care.”

“
Madre!
You really want to fight over this?” Carlotta asked.

“Diplomacy seems to have broken down.”

Nikka said mildly, “This mission is planned, there are backups, every contingency—”

“We’re blasted
ignorant.
Too ignorant.”

“The satellite rock looks to be about the same age as the last major craters on Isis, correct?” Nikka asked lightly, to soften matters.

“So?”

“It stands to reason they represent the last artifacts of EM technology. The two satellites, the superconductors in the village—that is all that remains.”

“Possible,” Nigel muttered. “Possible. But to understand Isis we’ve got to go carefully, start from scratch—”

“We’re scratching, that’s for sure,” Carlotta said.

“I do
not
want you to risk your life on an
assumption
.”

Carlotta’s face darkened. “God, you push things damned far. Are you
really
going to keep Nikka from doing the job she was
born
to do?”

Nigel opened his mouth to say,
Look, this is a private thing between the two of us
—and saw where that would lead.

“You may be a goddamn living monument,” Carlotta said, “but you can’t rule by authority. Not with us.”

Nigel blinked, thinking,
She’s right. So easy to fall into that trap
and

—suddenly saw how it was for Nikka, her mind shifting, restless, clotted with memories, reaching out toward him now with hands still moist from the cooking, the determined cast to the face, the firm lift in the stomach, a tight pull won from endless hours of exercise, keeping the machine ready so that she could still go out, the outstretched hands slick and webbed by age and brown liver spots, narrowing the space between them—

“You cannot fix me in amber,” she said.

“Or any of us, damn it,” Carlotta added.

To him Nikka’s face glowed with associated memories, shone in the spare kitchen with a receptive willingness.

“I … suppose you’re right.”

—It was 2034 again and he comes home in the warm Pasadena evening, putt-putting on a scooter. He clicks the lock open and slams the big oak door to announce himself, bounding up the staircase. In the white living room he calls out to her. Something chimes faintly in his ears. His steps ring on the brown Mexican tiles as he walks into the arched intersection of kitchen and dining nook. A woman’s spiked shoe lies on the tile. One shoe. Directly underneath the bedroom arch. He steps forward and the ringing in his ear grows. Into the bedroom. Look to the left. Alexandria lies still, facedown. Hands reaching out, clenched. Arms an ugly swollen red, where the disease was eating at her, would never stop eating—

He knew it then, saw her falling away into nothingness. The ambulance that shrieked through night mists, the antiseptic hospital, the terrible things done to her after—all that was coda to the symphonic life the two of them had shared, had tried to have with Shirley as well, yet the three-body problem had forever remained unsolved—

He saw abruptly that the fear of losing Alexandria had become part of him now. He had never recovered. With age, the fear of change seeped into him and blended with the losing of her. Nikka had now been with him longer than Alexandria had, and a mere hint of danger to her—

Nigel shook his head, letting the old, still-sharp images fade.

“Back with us?” Carlotta asked.

“I expect so,” he said unevenly.

Nikka studied him, understanding slowly coming into her face.

He said, “These things take a bit of time.”

Carlotta said, “I just
won’t
let you push her around.” She put her arms protectively around Nikka.

“Why does this conversation keep reminding me of the United Nations?”

“Well, it’s
true.”

Nikka said to Carlotta, “Still, we each have some power over the other.”

“Not
that
kind.”

“All kinds,” Nigel said. “Thighs part before me like the Red Sea. Point is, what are the limits?”

“If I don’t stand up to you, you’ll just run right over her,” Carlotta said.

Nikka said mildly, “That depends on the circumstances.”

Nigel smiled. “I’m not the ambivalent type. ‘Do you always try to look on both sides of an issue, Mr. Walmsley?’ ‘Well, yes and no.’ Not my kind of thing.”

“Well, you’d better
make
it—”

“Oh, come on, you two. The crisis is past,” Nikka said.

“Indeed. Let’s eat. Get back to basics.”

Nikka said, “Some Red Sea later?”

“We’ll negotiate over dessert.”

NINE

The mission team deployed carefully around Satellite A. One-third stayed forty klicks away, with the heavy gear and comm packs. A third scouted the surface. They found nothing special, verified Fraser’s dating and cratering count, and reconned the entrance holes. The last third set up the recon machines, tested the dark openings for sensors and trip lines, and finally decided all was well. No murmur of electromagnetic life came from the holes; nothing responded to their elementary probings.

The machines went in, tentatively and quietly. They were blocked by a sealed passageway thirty-three meters inside the rocky crust. The robots were cramped in the passage as it narrowed down and could not find anything to free the seal. Two women went in to eyeball the situation. They attached monitors to the black ceramic seal and listened for acoustic signatures which might reveal a lock.

The crew standing near the edge of the entrance hole was listening to the two women discuss matters. They felt a slight percussion. At the same instant the two women stopped speaking, forever. Something blue and ice-white came out of the dark hole. A millisecond-stepped scan of the video readback showed only this blue-white fog, and then—next frame—the beginnings of an orange explosion among the three human figures standing nearest the hole. In two more frames the boiling orange had reached the video lens itself and transmission stopped.

The orange moved like a liquid, licking the surface of the satellite clean in seven milliseconds. A tongue of it leaped off the surface, at the point closest to the orbiting mission team. It projected eighteen klicks toward them and then lapped, straining in long fibers, for twenty-two milliseconds. The mission crew had by this time registered only a blur of motion on their monitors. Two-thirds of the crew—all that were on the satellite—were dead.

The orange fibers twisted, coiled, and all but one retracted, fading. One grew, stretched, and struck the mission craft a weakened blow. High-temperature plasma blinded sensors and pitted steel skins. A gigawatt of snapping, snarling death burst over the spider-limbed ships. More died.

The orange thing withdrew, withering and darkening and collapsing down in forty-two milliseconds to a guttering white glow at the entrance hole. The rock of the satellite was now a burnished brown. Within a further fraction of a second, all electromagnetic activity from the satellite ceased. There was no residual radioactivity. The twelve remaining crew members had not yet had time to turn their heads, to see the thing that had come and gone.

Jesus Christ did you

is overloaded I can’t see anything but ejecta

they’re just gone I said no sign anywhere

no there’s that debris, I’m picking it up now in IR but

god-awful, they’re all smashed up, all the modules in orbit, like squashed peas

the camp’s smeared all over the surface like something crushed it dammit launch the two now we’ll get a booster on and follow