Transhuman (15 page)

And if we transform slowly, say only the young and computer knowledgeable gain that vaulted
immortality that the Singularity promises, either in digital form like my story, or in some form of
medical breakthrough that will extend our bodies indefinitely, they won't wash up on immortality's
shore fully formed and naked like "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli. They'll have baggage. They'll
have mothers and fathers and siblings to ground them back into what it is to be human.

IN COMMAND

John Lambshead

Men and first mates and sailing ships. Women and men. Both groupings have inspired countless
stories. In this story, all those ingredients mix with machine intelligences and unknowable aliens in
a far-future tale that veers from depths of space beyond our knowledge to the intricacies of the
human heart, which all too frequently is also unknown territory.

An old saying reverberated through Revick's mind. "I feel the need, the need for speed." He flew, running fast through the vibrating energy arrays that held the universe together. The cruiser was at its quickest in the weak energy fields of the low-dimensional matrix that lurked just below the surface of three-dimensional space-time. Strings of energy split in discord around the ship, flowed down its hull, and danced in agitated anxiety in its wake, disrupting the matrix and blinding his senses to what lay behind. But to the front and sides, he could see almost forever.

A mass ahead caught his eye, which puzzled him as, according to his information, this region should be empty of anything bigger than a molecule. He listened carefully and could just hear the grumble of dark matter, causing him to make an entry in his notebook to the effect that the charts were not entirely accurate.

He initiated a shallow turn to port; shallow because anything other than a gentle course change would bleed speed. The drive fields compressed the energy arrays to starboard causing them to flicker in frenzied agitation. The cruiser skidded slightly, losing momentum, but the thrusters had them back up to maximum speed almost immediately.

"I feel the need, the need for speed. Who on earth had first said that?" asked Revick.

"A fictional pilot called Maverick, in the play
Top Gun
," said a disembodied voice in his head. "Not that they were going very fast, as it was a pre-Singularity work."

"It's all a matter of perspective, Revenge," said Revick. "Speed is about how you feel, not about absolute velocity."

"Everything to humans is about how you feel," said Revenge, sounding almost wistful. "By the way, there are more problems up ahead."

Revick refocused his attention forward to see a great mass of dark matter lying like a reef ahead of him, blocking his way wherever he looked. "Our navigational charts are rubbish, Revenge," he said, in protest.

"This zone has not been properly surveyed," Revenge replied, defensively. Revick looked down, even though it was difficult to see into the higher dimensions because of the distortion they caused to the ship's detectors. He lit the area up, using focused illumination.

"The dark matter reefs go deep, but not impossibly so. Dammit!" he said. "We're supposed to be in a hurry, so let's try to go under."

"I warned you that it might have been quicker to take a longer, but better surveyed, route through known space," said Revenge.

"Yes, you warned me," said Revick. "Now, how about diving?" Revenge did not answer, but the nose of the cruiser tilted and they went down. Their speed dropped off as they pushed deeper into the matrix, through denser, higher-dimensional energy arrays.

"Tell me when you want to turn back," said Revenge.

"Keep going," said Revick. "You know that you won't let me risk the ship's destruction, so let's not play games."

Revenge chuckled in reply.

They crawled under the reef, winding around obstructions. Revick could hear nothing over the growl of dark matter, so, leaving the navigation solely to Revenge, he probed the depths with his eyes.

"Human curiosity is the curse of your species," observed Revenge.

"The depths fascinate me," admitted Revick. "And you won't allow the ship to be risked on dives without a practical reason so I don't often get a chance to see into the abyss. I often think that lack of curiosity is the curse of you mentalities."

He tuned his hearing downward, trying to screen out the background rumble of dark matter, and was rewarded by hearing a faint echo of something unusual whistling from far below. Revick spotlighted the area with active, focused illumination and saw things moving languidly in the deep. Flickers of energy passed between them, as if they were communicating, and sometimes they faded away or reappeared, as if from nowhere. A large shadow moved beneath the things and they disappeared in flashes of dissipating energy fields.

"Did you see that, Revenge?" Revick asked.

There was a micropause, which meant that the mentality was carrying out a long and involved analysis of the accumulated data, at the same time as flying the cruiser under the treacherous folds of the shoal.

"Yes," Revenge finally said, anticlimactically.

"So?" asked Revick, impatiently. "What do you think those energy flickers were?"

"I know what you think they were," said Revenge. "I have no idea."

"Have you seen shoals of fish chased by a predator?" asked Revick.

"The resemblance is startling," agreed Revenge. "But there is no evidence that what you saw is anything other than higher dimensional distortion of the cruiser's detection equipment."

"But—" Revick began.

"Humans like to speculate," Revenge interrupted. "And it is true that your intuitions are statistically more accurate than sheer chance would allow, but if these anomalies really were a form of life then we should have had some evidence by now. Look at the way they appear and disappear. Where do they go?"

"Who knows?" Revick said. Maybe they leave the universe all together. Maybe they go outside?"

"That's building speculation upon speculation, given that we don't even know that there is an outside."

"Perhaps it's only a question of diving deep enough and you leave the universe," said Revick.

"Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps," Revenge said, mockingly.

Revick was sick of the conversation. They had gone round this bush before, always carrying the same flags.

"Disconnect," he said, and the matrix faded away leaving him sitting in a comfortable swivel chair in his study, in front of a polished hardwood desk that was the only other furniture. The room was square with a high ornamental plaster ceiling and wood-paneled walls, on which were hung portraits of Revick's family. It smelled comfortingly of wax polish, leather, and male cosmetic scents. A window floated in midair, showing the view from the cruiser's detectors.

"Switch off," he added, and the window obligingly flicked out of existence. He rose and walked to the study door, his boot heels clicking on the mahogany floor.

"I will take a walk before dinner to stimulate my appetite." He opened the study door, by means of an imposing brass handle that fitted his hand exactly. Outside, a carpeted corridor, with ornate brass lights fixed every few meters along one wall, stretched away into the shadows. Satin-lined doors, a meter or so apart, lined the opposite wall.

"What would you like for dinner?" Revenge asked, its voice appearing to come from just over his head.

"A barbecue, I think. I believe I will take a stroll along the beach, and I would like some solitude," said Revick.

He walked a long way down the endless corridor to a door with a little brass plaque on it that simply said, "Club Med." He stepped through it straight onto a beach of pale yellow sand in a tiny bay, the water lapping gently just a few meters away. He stood for a moment, enjoying the dry heat of a Mediterranean day. The air was clean with the tang of salt and citrus trees, and, somewhere, a seagull croaked a lonely cry.

Revick shut the door behind him, whereupon it disappeared, then he walked back up the beach, his feet dragging in the sand, to where a dilapidated wooden hut sat amongst palm trees. An entire wardrobe of clothes, all conveniently his size, hung on racks within. He changed quickly, leaving his work clothes hanging neatly, and set off along the shore at a slow jog. After some little distance, he found it too hot to run so he slowed to a walk, reaching the modest peninsula at the end of the bay without meeting another soul.

A low bar built of local brick and wood snuggled in among the trees, where it could not be seen until one was right on top of the building. He was not surprised to find that there were no customers, as he had requested solitude. The only occupant was a white-tuxedoed barman who shook a cocktail mixer, pouring the contents carefully into a glass that was still frosted. Revick tasted the cold drink and, as he expected, it was a perfect blend of his favorite Pims, so he sat for some time savoring the taste and watching the light sparkle on the water. The barman had disappeared, somewhere, leaving him quite alone.

"Revenge?" Revick said.

"You called," replied the disembodied voice.

"I have changed my mind. On reflection, I have decided that I would like some company for dinner after all, as it might be my last chance to party for a while."

The bar immediately erupted in music and conversation from a mixed group of people sitting at the tables who lifted their glasses to him in greeting. He nodded at them and half raised a hand in reply. A spectacular blonde in a bikini sat on her own at the bar, caressing a colorless, iced drink with slender fingers. She was exactly his type. She appraised him with perfect, deep-blue eyes as he sat down beside her.

"Where have you been all my life?" she asked huskily, gazing at him in adoration.

A soft chime roused him from a deep sleep. He stretched out an arm but the blonde had vanished, leaving no imprint on his pillow, and not even her perfume lingered in the air. It was as if she had never existed, which was close to the truth, as she had returned to whatever data bank from which she had been drawn.

"Sorry to wake you up. I hope that you are not feeling too hung over," said Revenge, insincerely. "But we will be in the target zone in half an hour."

Revick took a moment to reboot his brain, as it had been quite a party. He showered, dressed, and gulped down a mug of strong tea before tottering into his study. Actually, there was no reason why he could not pilot the cruiser from his bed, or indeed from anywhere inside the ship's hull, but it was his habit to separate work and play. He sat in his leather chair, adjusting it for maximum comfort.

"Righto, Revenge, plug me in," he said, and the study was replaced by the matrix. The cruiser flew swiftly through clear, low-dimensional energy arrays just below the skin of the universe. Ahead of them, a single mass split into individual points as the ship closed on a local group of stars. Revenge turned toward a white dwarf, decelerating to almost zero as they reached the point where the star's mass extended as a shadow into the matrix, before angling the cruiser upward until they broached three-dimensional space.

Revick was momentarily deaf and blind until the real-space systems cut in. Revenge fired up the auxiliary gravity drives, and the cruiser accelerated toward the dwarf star, rapidly building up to relativistic speeds. The ship entered the stellar system to find the dwarf surrounded by a ring of orbital debris, some fifteen light-hours out. Revenge put the cruiser in a forced, high-speed orbit that ran around the belt, so that they could probe it.

"Intruders, in amongst the asteroids," Revenge said. "So the drone reports were accurate." Powered-down starships hid among the tumbling, fractured rocks and ice, invisible to all but a determined search. Terran Clade space was large and the Navy small, so they relied heavily on dumb, unarmed, reconnaissance drones to patrol and report. Usually, the first sign of trouble was when a drone disappeared but, this time, one had returned to report an unauthorized incursion. For some reason, the foreign vessels had failed to destroy the vulnerable little robot.

Hardly any two of the intruder ships were alike. The nearest vessel was shaped like a bulbous, purple cigar, with four fleshy fins two thirds of the way down its body and a bright orange spiral that ran from bow to stern. Two clusters of sensory organs were positioned high on the bow, like eyes. A delta-shaped vessel, with a central body and thick, gently undulating fins, floated in front of the cigar-ship. Revenge cruised slowly over them, gathering and absorbing data.

"Can you identify the clade?" asked Revick.

"Oh yes, that's easy enough," said Revenge. "These are bioships from Clade B734/2. You humans call them Goblins."

"Goblins?" queried Revick. "What on earth would they be doing here? I thought that Goblins lived well upspin." They passed another cigar-shaped bioship but this one had faded colors, and Revick could see heavy damage along its flank.

"The vessel ahead is signaling," said Revenge, positioning an arrow into Revick's vision. Revick looked in the indicated direction and saw a large vessel on the port bow that was shaped like a puffer fish, a tiny head and tail projecting from a spherical hull that was covered in warty protuberances.

"Can you translate?" Revick asked.

"The message is in English," said Revenge. "Listen."

"Terran Clade warship, we request safe passage." The message looped, endlessly.

"This is Terran Clade warship
Revenge
. You are in Terran Territory. Leave by the designated route or I will be forced to fire upon you," Revick said. "Send that reply, Revenge, with appropriate navigational guidelines."

"They are responding," said Revenge. "They request a face-to-face meeting with a Terran bioentity. I suppose that means you."

"They want to come aboard our ship?" exclaimed Revick. "That's out of the question."

"I agree," Revenge said. "But they have anticipated a refusal and claim that they have prepared a viable environment for you in their vessel. Of course, I cannot permit you to go."