Gateways (14 page)

Then add this irksome fact. That each stone held multitudes! Communities, accumulations, whole zoos of “gods,” in many shapes, who bickered, even when they agreed.

We had the blessing—and the curse—of highly varied counsel. Except, of course, when they all wanted the same thing.

But still,
Wer wrote,
they helped you rise up quickly.

Courier
nodded. Though whether the gesture was native to it, or learned from other humans, Wer could not tell.

One tribe—following advice—practiced fierce eugenics upon itself, in mountain isolation for fifty generations. When they burst forth, all other tribes were awed into submission. The females of our species wanted only to mate with their males.

The worldstone depicted a mob of naked primitives, bowing before another group that stood taller, more erect, wearing furs, with wide noses and thick manes—much like
Courier
himself.

Just a century later, we had cities. Within five, we were in space.

And then . . . only then . . . we learned what the emissaries wanted from us.

Wer felt tension, even though he knew the answer already. Everyone on Earth knew, thanks to the Havana Artifact. He had watched some news-informat shows about it, back in his small quarters at Newer Newport. Wer painted a summary with his finger.

They asked you to build more emissary stones—millions of duplicate bottles . . . And messengers to put inside them—and then to cast them forth toward new planets beyond.

An interstellar chain letter, people were calling it. Or a galactic pyramid scheme. The ultimate in “viral content”—getting neighbors to pass on more copies to more neighbors. In fact, that was exactly how one savant described it—a panelist on a show that Wer had seen, a renowned pandit from a top university in São Paulo.

“For a century and more,” the Brazilian had said, “we kept sifting the skies for radio signals from other civilizations, because optimistic astronomers calculated that other spawning grounds for intelligent life just
had
to be there! Moreover, those astronomers assumed—naturally—that alien races would use radio, which travels far easier across space than physical objects do.

“But what if nobody happens to be listening right then? What do you do? Keep broadcasting? On and on, forever? Over the millennia—or
eons—that it might take until that other star system develops technological people?
That
kind of commitment can get really expensive.

“Ah, but what if you send a probe, a tiny thing. True, the up-front cost is greater. But, with any luck, it can enter orbit above a likely planet and then wait, at no further cost to the civilization that sent it. Wait for people worth talking to.

“Some people dismissed the probe idea because they assumed that you must dispatch something fully capable. Of investigating and reporting back to the home world. Or mining local resources to make copies of itself. Any of these duties would demand heavy mass and fragile moving parts, rapidly increasing cost, reducing travel speed and cutting the numbers you can send. How much simpler to hurl just little, solid-state packets of information?

“Packets that can reproduce, simply by asking for that favor, at the other end!”

It had made sense to Wer . . . in a weird kind of way.

Only then the professor explained about the
viral
part. He talked further about how the Havana Artifact was indeed like a virus, moving from host to host, in order to get copies of its compact genes
sneezed onward
! Only, in this case, since the host would be an entire civilization, each packet had to be persuasive. It must sway an intelligent life form—a whole culture—to devote precious resources of their planet and solar system, in order to make huge telescopes and seek new planetary targets . . . then to manufacture vast numbers of new envoy-eggs and light sails . . . and giant lasers to propel them.

And what inducement could the little envoys use, to persuade such effort? Oh, the little eggs could offer knowledge. That might work with a few races with a strong sense of honor and quid pro quo. But something more was needed, an inducement more compelling.

“They offer to include some members of the host species, as new members of the community within,” the scholar said. “Like adding a new signature to the bottom of a chain letter. It’s what the Havana creatures propose. To show us how to download some of ourselves into crystal probes. A way for many humans to get to travel to the stars—as downloaded surrogates—and possibly live forever.”

At the time, Wer felt that it was clear, the scholar thought this a pretty good deal. Of course, a man like him would certainly be among those who would get the honor, to file a fully aware duplicate in hundreds, thousands of little message bottles, cast heavenward on beams of light.

Recalling that explanation, Wer now wrote on the surface of the worldstone, summarizing it all, in part to check on his own understanding.

Again,
Courier
nodded.

It is the same deal they presented to us, back on Turbulence.

And we agreed! After all, these were the gods who had vexed and confused and guided and tormented and loved and taught us, as far back as our collective trace memory could penetrate the misty past. Even when we knew what they truly were—mere puppets sent by beings who once lived near faraway suns—we felt obligated to move forward.

Slowly, of course, while building a society of knowledge and serenity . . .

But no! They hectored that it should now be our top priority! They badgered us . . . until, at last, they confided a reason for haste.

And so came the great lie . . .

Black characters continued appearing under the surface of the stone, but the contrast was fading. Wer realized that it must be drawing low on its supply of stored energy. Moreover, his eyes hurt.

He painted a symbol on the ovoid—
WAIT
—and rubbed them. Time also for some water. The last protein bar . . .

A musical tone suddenly filled the little chamber. It might have been deafening, except for the padding on the walls. He looked about, voiced a question for the mechanical sea serpent, but got no answer.

Then a single word appeared in the lower right, offered by his ai-patch.

Ascent.

Sure enough, it felt as if the robot were now aiming upward, throbbing hard with swishing strokes of its long tail. Peering through the tiny window, Wer watched as an extinct volcano passed by—its eroded peak now crowned by a coral reef that shimmered with sunlit surf. Was this the secret base of whatever group had sent the serpent after him?

After the worldstone, that is?

But no, instead of entering the lagoon via a clear channel that Wer spied passing through the shoals, the machine undulated away, following a shoulder of the mountain toward a ridge of shallows, some distance from the atoll. And it began slowing down.

During one of the snake’s looping movements, Wer caught sight of something . . . a metal
chain
leading from an anchoring point on the bottom, tethering something that bobbed at the surface. A wave-energy generator? Was the robot only stopping here to replenish its energy stores?

The thought that this might only be a brief stop, along a much longer journey, seemed to fill Wer’s body with aches and his mind with a new-formed terror of confinement. The tiny space was suddenly even smaller and more stagnant than before. He flexed, involuntarily pushing with hands and feet against the close, padded space, breathing hard.

Wer

Focus

It is a weather and communications buoy.

The words, floating boldly, briefly, in his lower right field of view, both chided and calmed him. Wer even had the presence of mind not to subvocalize his relief. No doubt this was a rendezvous point. The serpent would use the buoy to summon another vehicle. A seaplane, perhaps. Wer had been on a similar journey before. Well, somewhat similar.

And yet, after all that covering of tracks, the Chinese Special Forces found us. Found the worldstone. Did they have a spy on Newer Newport? Or did one of their satellites pick up some special color of light, reflected by the stone when I left it outside, soaking in the sun?

Perhaps he would never know. Just as he might never learn the fate of Dr. Nguyen. Or Ling and their child.

Outside, through the little window, he could see a growing brightness as they rose toward daylight. The front end of the snake-bot broached and he abruptly had to shade his eyes against a sunshine dazzle off the ocean’s rippling surface. Even with help from the ai-patch, it took a minute of blinking adjustment before he could make out something that bobbed nearby—a floating cluster of gray and green cylinders, with arrays of instruments and antennae on top.

Wriggling gingerly, carefully, the serpaint moved closer to curl its body around the buoy and grasp it firmly. Then Wer saw its mouth open and a tendril emerge.

It will tap in

to communicate

with its faction

The floating characters took on an edgy quality, drawn with strokes of urgency.

You must please act urgently

This won’t be easy

Blink twice if willing

He was tempted to balk, to at least demand answers to a few basic questions . . . like
Willing to do what? For whom? To what end?

But when it came right down to the truth, Wer didn’t care about any of
that. He had only one basis to pick and choose among the factions that were battling over the worldstone—and over his own miserable carcass.

Dr. Nguyen had been courteous and the snake-thing had been rude. That mattered. He closed his eyes, two times.

Good

Now you must press close to the window

Look at the buoy

Do not blink your right eye at all

He only hesitated a moment before complying. It was where curiosity compelled him to go, anyway.

At first he saw only an assembly of cylinders with writing on them—much of it in English, beyond his poor grasp of that language. Wer could make out various apertures, lenses, and devices. Some of them must sample air, or taste the water, part of a planetwide network of tools for measuring changes in a world under environmental stress. On the other side of the floating platform, he could make out the snake-robot’s tendril, probing to plug itself into some kind of data port.

All right . . . so what are we trying to . . .

He stopped, and almost jerked back in surprise as the scene loomed
toward
him, zooming in on one part of the nearest cylinder. Of course there was nothing new about vision-zooming. But it had never happened
within
his own eye, before!

Wer kept as still as possible. Evidently, the patch had means of manipulating his organic lens . . . and using the surrounding muscles in order to aim the eye, as well. He quashed a feeling of hijacked helplessness.

When has my life ever really been my own?

Zooming and tracking . . . he found himself quickly zeroing-in upon one of those gleaming, glassy spots, where the buoy must stare day and night upon the seascape, stormy and clear, patiently watching, accumulating data for the great and growing Grand Model of the World. Suddenly, that gleaming lens filled Wer’s right-hand field of view . . . and he closed the left eye, in order to let it become everything. A single disk of coated optical crystal . . .

. . . that
flared
with a sudden burst of bluish-green! More shocking, still, Wer realized that the color had come from
within his own eye
—spearing outward, spanning the gap and connecting . . .

I didn’t know the implant could do that.

I wonder if even Dr. Nguyen knew.

It took every gram of grit and steadfastness to keep from drawing back, or at least blinking.

Almost in

But—

The floating characters stayed outside the cone of action, yet somehow remained readable. They throbbed with urgency.

—you must press your eye

against the window

Wer you must

or all is lost

A low moan fought to escape his throat and he barely managed to quell the sound, along with a sudden heaving in his gut. Gritting his teeth hard, all Wer could think about was the need to overcome raw, organic reflex—passed down all the way from when distant forebears climbed out of the sea. An overwhelming impulse to withdraw from pain, from damage, from fear—

—versus a command from far more recent parts of the brain. To go forward.

Using two fingers of his right hand to hold back the lids, Wer let out a soft grunt and pushed his head against the glass so hard that the eye had to come along.

It was bad.

Good

Not quite so hard

Hold it

Hold it

Hold it

He held, while greenish flares shot back and forth, between his lens and the glassy one on the buoy . . . and flashing internal reflections bounded around the inside of his right eye, like a maelstrom of cascading needle ricochets. At one point, his confused retina seemed to be looking at an image of
itself
, a cluster of blood vessels and sensor cells, and Wer felt boggled by an endless—bottomless—reflection of himself that seemed far more naked and soul-revealing than any mere contemplation of a face in a mirror.

And meanwhile, another part of him wondered in detachment:
How did I know what a “retina” is? Is even memory still mine, anymore?

Worse. It got much worse, as the sea serpent seemed to catch on that something was going on. The thrashing intensified and a low growl resonated up and down the snakelike cloaca. Wer responded by clenching hard and holding even tighter.