The Sunborn (39 page)

Legions of “experts” (whatever that meant) had profiled from this lode. The Beings, they thought, were opportunists. Every now and then, the Beings said, clots and clouds drifting in the realm between the stars would wander into the path of the Hotness, which apparently meant the sun. Those big clouds had increased density and mass and smacked into the prow of the solar system. For a “short while”—which seemed to mean centuries—the interstellar wilderness where the Beings thrived would press inward. Most Beings avoided that turbulent zone. But this local group relished the chance to feast on an enhanced Cascade—their harvesting of incoming energy.

So they ventured inward. And fed. And instigated.

It was not clear why. Certainly the turbulent zone where the solar wind met the interstellar plasma was ripe with energy. And as that boundary, the “heliopause,” bulged in, forced by the increased interstellar pressure, the Beings moved with it.

Perfectly natural,
follow the food.
But why the Pluto experiment? Julia felt that they were just born curious. Maybe that was a universal, too, among intelligent creatures. Perhaps curiosity was how they got smart.

Shanna, in her role of discoverer of Plutonian life, thought there was some ancient driver. She asked Wiseguy to scan carefully the Beings’ word choices, for terms like “ancient,” “epoch,” “age span,” “eon.” “I think they want to find out where they came from,” she had said. “Which seems to be ‘the Fount,’ whatever that is.”

“Somewhere in the solar system?” Viktor had scowled doubtfully at Shanna’s screen image.

“That’s what they say—I think. These codes in Wiseguy aren’t perfect.”

“Unlike her,” Viktor said out of range of the microphones.

The codes were fast but blunt, yes, but in time they served. One thing was clear: the Beings seemed troubled. Some of their party had departed in a rage. These Earthside had identified by their “color”—low-frequency emissions, apparently leakage from their interior thoughts. The Beings left behind kept up a running debate—on which
High Flyer
and
Proserpina
eavesdropped, with Earthside’s legions kibitzing—about what to do. Some felt they should break off contact because it was dangerous, new, frightening. New opinions came in daily, from Beings so distant that the light travel time was just getting to them.

This was another clue that the Beings had an ornately complex society, which one might well expect, given that their apparent age was 3 or 4 billion years. This Wiseguy eavesdropped from conversations; their time scale used as a unit circuits of the sun around the galaxy, which is about 250 million years. Not much younger than the sun itself. And at least one, called Recorder, said it had been around back then.

This conclusion had taken a while to check and even longer to get used to. They had invited Shanna and some of her crew for a discussion of it.

“Cannot be creatures who live forever,” Viktor maintained.

Shanna and Julia agreed, which surprised them both—brows furrowed, eyes carefully not looking at each other—even though they were both biologists. “Evolution always trades off long-term traits against short-term advantage,” Shanna had said, her tone implying that she had not expected this from Viktor. “That’s why we age.”

Viktor had shaken his head. “We wear out, is all.” He had sprained his foot the day before doing some repair work and illustrated his thesis by limping across the dayroom deck.

Julia said helpfully, “Look at our hearts. They work fine for a while, when we’re mating and bringing up children, but then they get clogged and fail.”

Viktor grinned. “I know theory. But these Beings, they say they do not reproduce.”

Both the women biologists blinked at this. How a Being could arise without natural selection through reproduction was a mystery. Even beyond carbon-based molecules, the principles were supposed to be universal. “This feels pretty damned anti-Darwinian,” Shanna called it, shaking her head.

“But they are here.” Viktor grinned again.

“Must be they started off growing from some kernel,” Julia ventured. “Their
growth
was selected for.”

“Um.” Viktor was not convinced; his mouth twisted at both sides, in opposite directions. “So they get smarter when get bigger? Or started smart?”

“Traits evolve,” Shanna said, “they don’t just pop out full-blown. Each step has to give the organism some incremental advantage.”

“Oh?” Viktor shrugged. “Maybe Darwin not so universal.”

The biologists agreed to leave the theory for later. Viktor judged this to be a victory, though it was unclear for whom, and brought out some champagne he had hidden deep in the bowels of
High
Flyer.
“Hard times lately,” he observed. The sound of popping corks pleased everyone.

F
ORCEFUL COILED ITSELF
about a metallic slab of matter—gingerly, gingerly. The mass tumbled in blackness, glinting with ice. Yet the Beings could sense its hardness, its slow-yielding mass.

Sunless sent,

help
me.> Angrily Forceful intensified its magnetic fluxes near the tumbling mote. Arcs of spitting ions sprayed the lump.

To Sunless this place was already uncomfortably warm. They had abandoned the others, then followed an arc around, to harvest energies near the Cascade. Then they converged, conversing softly, planning, gathering their strengths. Plasma gnawed at their boundaries, irksome and itching. The Six spiraled near each other restlessly, some light-minutes away from the solid ships. Sunless and Forceful had broken off from the Eight as soon as the solids sent a confirming signal, the small shape of a toroid—the basic form of Being life.

Now there would follow some tedious and disagreeable exchange of signals—
talk, talk, talk,
endlessly. The Eight would debate the meaning of such motes knowing the toroid, and whether this in some elemental way meant that motes could attain the status of Beings. Such ideas were too much for the Six. They seethed with impatience.

Forceful had gone to the rest of the Six and made his case. If their goal of Outbounding was ever to come to pass, they would need the Eight. But Instigator had captured the attention of the Eight with its dangerous experiments on the cold world. Now the vermin from the Hotness threatened them all. The case was clear: Forceful finished.

Dusk, now Forceful’s new pair-partner, had necessarily gone along, but remained quiet. Ring and Serene were distant, pondering matters. Mirk, now paired with Sunless, was similarly reluctant. Out of politeness Forceful dragged along the forlorn, shrunken Chill. Though Forceful had mentored Chill, Forceful bristled with spires of pinched, angry energy as it towed the pale and withered, Diminished Chill. None could bear to see the ragged shreds of murmuring plasma that festered from Chill’s boundaries, pathetic and diseased.

Forceful asked them all with due formality and quite politely: would they join in another attack?

No. Somehow the novelty of the moment had shattered the Six.

But not Sunless and Forceful. Each seethed with rage, sending snarled traceries down their field lines.

Forceful spat as he worked. Forceful had shaped itself, cupping its speech to broadcast outward. Those Beings farther out would hear his fury song. Perhaps they could be allies in future.

From the outer reaches came a calming song.

Forceful fumed and did not deign to answer. It radiated a fury pure and righteous.

Sunless replied in a voice studied and calm.

Forceful continued to work but let no sign of this mix with its radiations. His tone was lofty, in case the Eight heard.

This provoked relieved mirth from the Six. Forceful always knew how to shift discussions in its favor, winning with charm. He fumed, ripe with thoughts now, burning his stored reserves in his fury.

Sunless knew to let Forceful talk. Now she slid in with,

Forceful said.

Sunless said.

Forceful was not skilled at tiny operations, having long ago left that to the likes of Crafter.

The two Beings were in essence flexing fields. Only in long-term memory did they have need for a realm, tucked in deep inside themselves, for permanent fields that could hold memory for the ages. There, static arrays held fixed their core personalities, built up over billions of years. External forces could destroy these. Indeed, a Being named Thoughtful, legendary in wisdom, had been rendered stupid by a passing shard of cold matter that sliced through its central web of magnetically hoarded memory. Such a mass as the one Forceful now grasped, tugging it and slinging it about, uncertain but angry.

Forceful said.

Sunless had gone looking for another such metallic, conducting fragment. They were uncommon, but over her vast expanse she grasped several. She suspected that Forceful had been holding this one nearby somehow, ready to use. Now was the time. Sunless gripped the shard with her own magnetic fields, though it was slippery.

Stalks of current mingled between the two Beings. Fine sprays of atoms, dancing forever in buoyant fields, clashed with electrons to make a pinch. Together they snaked the fragment around in a circle, calling to each other to achieve balance and heft. A luminescence sprang between them where energies surged.

Forceful said.

Forceful swung the shard around roughly in his fields, using to the full cold matter’s natural rejection of their fields.

Mass is brute. It required powerful surges of currents, yet a delicate sense of timing.

With Sunless to help he whipped the conducting rock around in a last surge, then loosed it—collapsing his fields at one side, letting the mass escape. Toward the ships. Fast.

Forceful sent with joy.