Transgalactic (24 page)

Latha looked at her kindly and shook her head. “That's a fascinating story,” she said, “but, dear, you haven't been completely honest with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The story of the
Adastra
is a legend here on Earth,” Latha said. “How Ren stole the nexus-point charts and sneaked the
Adastra
away from Federation Central and sent the women and children back to Earth with the charts while he and his crew led the pursuers on a chase that ended with the
Adastra
vanishing—totally vanishing. And it hasn't been seen since.”

“Maybe I left something out,” Asha said.

“And you left out the part where you were a member of the crew,” Latha said. “The only human left behind was a man who must have been your father. Which means that you know what happened to the
Adastra
.”

“It was a long, dangerous journey that ended in death for almost everybody,” Asha said. “It's a story that nobody would believe, and I certainly wouldn't inflict it on somebody I just met.”

“We'll have to talk about that later,” Latha said. “But now I must admit that I haven't been completely honest with you, either. I'm not only a commenter, I'm an Anon, and so is everybody else who lives here. Our goal is to destroy the Pedia.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Riley read the message on the door set into the dusty surface of the moon. It still said “Go away!” He checked the moon suit's power and air reserves. They were well past half empty. Finally he switched on the suit's communicator. He was reluctant to run the risk of his transmission being intercepted by Earth's Pedia, but his need was greater than his caution, the range of his communicator was only a few hundred meters, and the entire bulk of the moon stood between him and Earth's sensors.

“I ask for help under Galactic Convention Seven Five Three Six,” he said.

There was a long silence and Riley was about to repeat his request when a raspy voice responded, “Galactic conventions don't apply here.”

“Galactic conventions were accepted by Earth and its system worlds when the truce was signed,” Riley said.

After another pause, the same voice said, “I never signed a truce.”

Riley thought a moment. “I believe I am speaking to Jak Plus,” he said. “I have information about Jon and Jan.”

Silence followed and then, without further reply, the door set into the dust of the lunar surface slid aside, and Riley saw that the moon dust he had believed scattered across its surface was actually a part of the door itself. He descended a dozen meters into a more elaborate air lock than Bel and Caid's Lunar Project Number Two. As the door closed and the lights came on, he could see, in the brackets on the wall, sturdier and more specialized moon suits than the standard model Bel had provided. The walls were stainless steel and the far door looked solid enough to resist a meteor strike. This was no temporary project. It had been built for the ages.

The entering air was almost silent and so was the far door when it opened as he was removing his moon suit. A young woman with dark hair and brown eyes, clad in a short, one-piece garment in a muted brown, stood in the doorway silhouetted by the light streaming from behind her. She looked a great deal like a female version of Jon and Jan.

“Jer?” Riley said.

“Tell me about Jon and Jan,” she said in a tone that entertained no possibility of noncompliance.

In that she was not like her clonemates. “I'll tell you when I tell Jak,” he said.

“Jak doesn't see anybody,” she said.

“He'll see me,” Riley said.

“He's old and sick. He doesn't see anybody. Tell me—”

The same raspy voice that Riley had heard on the communicator came from hidden speakers, as if it had materialized in the air. “Bring him here.”

Jer turned and Riley followed her rigid back down a long corridor past closed and open doors, some of which revealed laboratories with gleaming metal-and-glass apparatus that Riley had never seen before, not even in his days at the Solar Institute. At the end of the corridor a doorway opened into a large living space fitted with solid metal and fabric furniture and a pneumatic bed equipped with oxygen tanks and other medical devices that Riley could not identify. The air had the medicated odor of a sickroom. In the middle of the bed, sitting up against pillows, was an old man who looked startlingly like Jon and Jan and Jer except with sagging jowls and white hair.

“Jak?” Riley said, although he knew who it was.

“I've never called myself ‘Jak Plus,'” the old man said. “That was an invention of my enemies, of which I have made many over the years. But now you must tell me about Jon and Jan.”

“First I need to know whether you are under surveillance,” Riley said.

“Surveillance?” Jak said. “What are you talking about?”

“I have reason to believe that Earth's Pedia, and the other Pedias in the galaxy, have an unhealthy interest in my existence.”

Jak snorted. It was an effort that shook his body. “You're as paranoid as I am,” he said. “I severed my connections with Earth, and its Pedia, decades ago. That's why I built my laboratory on the moon. Everything here is self-contained, including the energy and food supply. I reinvented what used to be called ‘a computer' to do tedious calculations. It does what I tell it and no more. “Now, tell me about Jon and Jan.”

Riley nodded. He knew what Jak wanted. Unlike Jer, Jak was interested not in their fate but in the fate of their mission. “Jon was alive the last time I saw him. He was revived from an attempt to destroy, by freezing, the symbiotes from the Ganymede project. Jan could not be revived.”

“You said ‘the last time you saw him—'” Jer began.

Jak cut her off. “This happened on the
Geoffrey
.” It was not a question.

“Yes,” Riley said. “After we landed on the planet of the Transcendental Machine, we got separated from the rest of the passengers and crew, including Jon. It's unlikely that any of them survived, but it's possible. I'll tell you about that in a little while, but first I want to tell you about something else that will interest you far more.”

“I'll decide what interests me. Tell me about the Transcendental Machine,” Jak said.

Riley considered how much he should tell Jak. There was no doubt the man was a “mad scientist,” but maybe a mad scientist was what he and Asha needed. “In the first place it's not a Transcendental Machine, it's a transportation device. Its transcendental function is just an unanticipated consequence.”

“How do we get our hands on it?” Jak said.

“You don't,” Riley said. “It's not even in our spiral arm. And the trip to get there is across the mostly empty space between spiral arms, the nexus-point charts are nonexistent, and the only people who have any clue to them are dead or missing. And even if you or your emissaries, like Jon and Jan, could get there, they'd probably be killed by the arachnoids who guard the place.”

“And yet you're here,” Jak said.

Riley nodded. “Me and one other.”

“And who is that?”

“Maybe I'll tell you if we can reach an agreement.”

“About what? You've already told me the Transcendental Machine is worthless.”

“The Machine, maybe, but not what it implies: It works,” Riley said. “You can make your own.”

“My own Transcendental Machine?” Jak said.

“Your own matter transmitter,” Riley said, “which is the same thing, if you can do it. The Transcendental Machine destroys the material as it is analyzed and sends that information to a receiver where it is reconstituted. But it leaves behind all the imperfections, so what is reconstituted is the ideal state of what went into it.”

Jak sat up straight. “That might mean a cure for diseases, even fatal diseases, deformities, lost limbs!”

“Even aging,” Riley said. “But more important, it means improved versions of what went into it, smarter, better qualified to function in today's galaxy, maybe even compete on equal terms with the most powerful species in the galaxy. And their Pedias.”

“Immortality,” Jak said.

“Maybe,” Riley said. “Better, anyway, than your cloning experiment—and the symbiotes. They were why Jon and Jan signed on to the
Geoffrey.
Not just because you sent them, as Jon told us, but because they hoped the Transcendental Machine would rid them of their controlling symbiotes.”

“Nonsense,” Jak said. “They were better than a pedia. Jer, tell the man.”

“I've told you about them many times, Jak,” Jer said. “And you always tell me to forget it. I've learned how to segregate them—to keep them out of my head when I really focus on it—but if I didn't have to fight that battle all the time I could do something better with my life.”

“It would be really difficult to build a device for destructive analysis, not to mention preserving the result and using it to reconstitute the original, without the device to study,” Jak mused. “But you have seen it work?”

“I'm proof that it works,” Riley said.

“It would mean a lot of experiments,” Jak mused, “first with materials, then with living subjects, and many failures. But, after all, what are we but information? It is likely I would not see the end of it.” His sagging features firmed. “But it would be a great memorial. A final triumph. A blow in the face of my enemies. And I have Jer. Jer will continue my work, for her own love of success as well as my reputation. She is, after all, a younger me.”

It looked as if he and Asha had found the right mad scientist, Riley thought. He looked at Jer, who seemed to be torn by conflicting emotions—wanting to reject Jak's comparison while excited about the possibilities of the project. Perhaps she was not just a copy of Jak but an improved version.

“There's one other thing,” Riley said. “I want to tell you about an ancient artifact that I acquired after I was transported.”

“How ancient?” Jak said.

“Older than anything ever discovered before,” Riley said. “Probably a million long-cycles ago—I mean ‘years.'”

“How can that be? There aren't any galactic civilizations half that old,” Jak said.

“Not in this spiral arm. But in the next one, in the spiral arm of the creatures who built the Transcendental Machine, where intelligent life and technology must have gotten started earlier.”

“Well?” Jak said.

“It's a million-year-old spaceship,” Riley said.

“Miracle after miracle,” Jak said. “Of course your account of the Transcendental Machine is just a story. An unlikely story, at that, and your presenting yourself as proof of its existence can hardly be verified. But a spaceship is a different matter. You must have one.”

“It brought me here,” Riley said. “I recognize that my description of the Transcendental Machine and what it does is hard to believe and harder still to prove. No amount of physical and mental tricks is going to convince you that I'm not inventing the whole thing. But the alien spaceship is solid and real, and I'm willing to offer it to you not only as validation of my story, but as an artifact for study.”

“And what kind of artifact survives a million years? Even a spaceship,” Jak said.

“Something truly remarkable.” Riley told them how he had entered the Transcendental Machine and found himself in a pyramid on the dinosaur planet, how he had discovered the red sphere, why he thought it had been left there, how he had gained entrance to it, and how he had used it to get back to Earth. He did not tell them about Rory, which would have made his story even less believable, or about his stop at Dante, which would only distract them, or about Asha, which would only confuse them and perhaps put Asha in danger. As it was, Jak and Jer were unconvinced.

“That sounds like some ancient space romance,” Jer said. “Full of incredible adventures and near-death escapes.”

“And how was it possible,” Jak said, “that a million-year-old spaceship would still function, or that you could figure out how to make it work?”

“I could attribute it to the improvements of the Transcendental Machine process, but the ancient creatures who built the Transcendental Machine also built the spaceship, and they built things to last,” Riley said. “They thought in millennia, not in years, and whatever their plans were for our spiral arm, they knew it would take many generations to accomplish.”

“And so—?” Jak said.

“Their machines were not only built to last, they were built to be self-maintaining. Maybe because the material they were built from was in itself intelligent, able to adapt to changing conditions. And that was why I was able to make it work.”

“How?” Jak said.

“Because it adapted to me. It analyzed me when I entered. I don't know how. But it shaped itself to my needs and fashioned furnishings to fit me, food to sustain me, and controls that I could learn how to use. Which was a blessing for me but a loss for human science.”

“What kind of loss?” Jer said.

“We can't learn from the ship what the aliens were like,” Riley said. “If it had retained its original shape, we could have learned something about what they were like physically, and maybe even something about their psychology and philosophy, maybe even their science from the tools and other equipment they used. Though, if that were the case, I would be sitting back on that alien planet where I found it, and I would be sitting dead inside it. Assuming that all of this is real.”

“A big assumption,” Jak said, “but here you are, and you must have the spaceship as proof.”

“Indeed,” Riley said. “And this.” He pulled a glob of rosy material from his pocket, and held it out in his palm as the material shaped itself into a drinking cup with a handle. He gave it to Jer, who studied it for a moment and handed it to Jak.