Gateways (8 page)

A glint of white cloth and silvery metal . . . Wer winced as his right eye, fresh from surgery, overreacted to the sudden glare, reflecting off a twenty-meter sailing vessel that passed into view, around the far corner of Newer Newport. Sails billowed and figures hurried about the deck, tugging at lines. A call—distant but clear—bellowed across the still surface of the lagoon.

“Two-six, heave!”

Voices answered in unison as well-drilled teamwork rapidly set the main sail. Though the crew seemed to be working hard, nobody would call it “labor.” Not when the poorest citizen of this independent nation could buy or sell a man like Wer, ten thousand times or more. Wer found the sight intriguing, in more ways than he could count.

I always thought that rich people would lay about, letting servants and robots do everything for them. Sure, you heard of wealthy athletes and hobbyists. But I had no idea so many others would also choose to sweat and strain . . . for fun. Or that it could be so—

He shook his head, lacking the vocabulary. Then something happened that he still found disturbing. A dark splotch appeared, as if by magic, in a lower corner of his right eye. The shadow resolved into a single Chinese character, with a small row of lesser figures underneath, offering both a definition and pronunciation guide.

Obsessive.

Yes. That word seemed close to what he had in mind. Or, rather, what the ai in his eye estimated, after following his gaze and reading subconscious signals in his throat, the subvocalized words that he had muttered within, without ever speaking them aloud.

This was going to take some getting used to.

“Peng Xiao Wer,” a voice spoke behind him. “You have rested and the worldstone has recharged. It is time to return.”

It was the same voice that he had come to associate with the penguin-machine, his constant companion during the hurried journey that began less than a hundred hours ago—first swimming away from his wife and child and the little shorestead they all shared, then aboard a midget submarine, followed by a fast coastal packet-freighter, then a hurried midnight transfer to a seaplane that made a rendezvous, in midocean, with yet another submarine . . . and all that way accompanied by a black birdlike robot. His guide, or keeper, or guard, it had spoken to him soothingly about his coming duties as keeper of the worldstone.

Only at journey’s end, after surfacing and stepping onto Newer Newport, here in Pulupau, did Wer meet the original owner of the voice.

“Yes, Nguyen Ky,” he answered, turning and nodding to a slight man, with Annamese features and long black hair braided in elegant rows.

“I come, sir.”

He turned to gather up the off-white ovoid—the
worldstone
—from a nearby patio table, where it had lain in sunshine for an hour, soaking energy. A welcome break for him, as well.

As carefully as he would handle a baby, Wer hefted the artifact and followed Nguyen Ky between sliding doors of frosted glass, moving slowly, out of habit, in order to let his eyes adapt to interior dimness. Only, he might as well not have bothered. His right eye . . . or ai . . . now adjusted brightness and contrast for him, more quickly than any spreading of his natural iris.

The room was broad and well-appointed, with plush furnishings that adapted to each user’s comfort preference. Programmable draperies were set to a soothing pattern that rippled gently, like a freshwater brook, though the farthest window was left open. Through it, Wer glimpsed the rest of Newer Newport—more than a hectare of sleek, multistoried luxury, perched on massive footings, firmly anchored over the spot where the ancestral kings of Pulupau once had their palace.

Some distance beyond, a series of other mammoth stilt-villages, each wildly different in style, followed one curve of the drowned atoll. They had odd names. like
Thielville
,
Minerva
,
Dzugasvilligrad
,
Bhodisathere
, and
Friedman’s Freehold.
One of them—with architecture reminiscent of palm logs and thatch roofing—was set aside for the old royal family and a number of genuine Pulupauese. As legalistic insurance, in case any nation or consortium ever questioned the sovereign independence of this archipelago of wealth.

Seasteading.
Of course, Wer had heard of such places. Along the spectrum of human wealth, these projects lay at the very opposite end from the
shore
stead that he had settled with Ling, in the garbage-strewn Huangpu. Here, and in a few dozen other locales, some of the world’s richest families had pooled funds to buy up small nations to call their own, escaping responsibility to the continental states, with their teeming, populist masses. And taxes. Yet, there were essential traits shared in common by seastead and shorestead. Adaptation. Making the best of rising seas. Turning calamity into advantage.

Three technical experts—a graceful Filipina who never removed her wraparound immersion goggles; an islander, possibly an heir of the native
Pulupauans, who kept fingering his interactive crucifix; and an elderly Chinese gentleman, who spoke in the soft tones of a scholar—watched Wer gingerly replace the worldstone in its handcrafted cradle, surrounded by instruments and sleek, ailectronic displays.

The ovoid had already started coming alive, in response to his touch. Nobody knew why, as keeper of the worldstone, Wer alone could rouse the object’s power to create vivid images that shone within—like a whole world or universe shining within an egglike capsule, half a meter long. Whatever the reason, Wer was grateful for the honor, for the employment, for a chance to participate in matters far above his normal station of life.

The now familiar entity
Courier of Warnings
lurked—or seemed to lurk—just within the pitted, egglike curves, amid those ever-present swirling clouds.
Courier
’s ribbon eye stared outward, resembling Anna Arroyo’s unblinking goggles, while the creature’s diamond-shaped, four-lipped mouth pursed in a perpetual expression of worry or disapproval.

Wer carefully reattached a makeshift device at one end, which compensated for some of the object’s surface damage, partly restoring a sonic connection. Of course, he had no idea how the mechanism—or anything else in the room—worked. But he kept trying to learn every procedure. If only so the others would consider him a colleague and not an experimental subject.

From their wary expressions, he could tell it would take time.

“Let us resume,” Dr. Nguyen said. “We were attempting to learn about the stone’s arrival on Earth. Here are the ideograms we want you to try next, please.” The small man laid a sheet of e-paper in front of Wer, bearing a series of characters. They looked complex and very old—even archaic.

Fortunately, Wer did not have to hold the ovoid in his hands anymore. Just standing nearby seemed to suffice. Bringing his right index finger close—and sticking out his tongue a little in concentration—he copied the first symbol by tracing it across the surface of the worldstone. Inky brushstrokes seemed to follow his touch-path. Actually, it came out rather pretty.
Calligraphy . . . one of the great Chinese art forms. Who figured I would have a knack for it?

He managed the next figure more quickly. And a third one. Evidently, the ideograms were not in modern Chinese, but some older dialect and writing system that preceded the unification standards of great Chin, the first emperor. Fortunately, the implant in his eye went ahead and offered a translation, which he spoke aloud.

“Date of arrival on Earth?”

There were two projects going on, at once. First, using the ancient symbols to ask questions. But Dr. Nguyen also wanted to expose the entity to modern words. Ideally—if it truly was much smarter than an earthly ai—it should learn the more recent version of Chinese, and other languages as well. Anyway, this would test the ovoid’s adaptability.

After a brief pause,
Courier
appeared to lift one arm, with a weirdly flexible double-elbow, and knocked Wer’s ideograms away, causing them to shatter and dissolve with a flick of one three-fingered hand. The simulated alien then proceeded to draw a series of new figures that jostled and arrayed themselves against the worldstone’s inner face. Wer also sensed the bulbous right end of the stone emit faint vibrations. Sophisticated detectors fed these to a computer, whose vaice then uttered enhanced sounds that Wer didn’t understand.

Fortunately, Yang Shenxiu, the white-haired Chinese scholar, could. He tapped a uniscroll in front of him.

“Yes, yes! So
that
is how those words used to be pronounced. Wonderful.”

“And what do they mean, please?” demanded the Vietnamese mogul standing nearby.

“Oh, he . . . the being who resides within . . . says that he cannot track the passage of time, since he slept for so long. But he will offer something that should be just as good.”

Dr. Nguyen stepped closer. “And pray, what is that?”

The alien brought its forearms together and then apart again. The ever-present clouds seemed to converge, bringing darkness upon a patch of the worldstone, till deep black reigned across the center. Wer caught a pointlike glitter . . . and another . . . and then two more . . . and another pair . . .

“Stars,” announced Anna Arroyo. “Six of them, arrayed in a rough hexagon . . . with a final one in the middle, off-center . . . I’m searching the online constellation catalogs. . . . Damn. All present-day matches include some stars that are below seventh magnitude, so it’s unlikely . . .”

“Please do not curse,” said the islander, Patri Menelaua. “Let’s recall that the topic at hand is time. Dates.
When.
Stars shift.” Still fondling the animatronic cross that hung from a chain around his neck, he added. “Try going retrograde . . .”

The figure of Jesus seemed to squirm, a little, away from his touch. Anna frowned, but nodded. “I’m on it. Backsifting and doing a whole sky match-search in one hundred year intervals. This could take a while.”

Wer grunted. Held back a moment. Then hurriedly blurted: “Seven!”

The scholar and the rich man turned to him. Wer had to swallow to gather courage, managing a low croak.

“Try the seven maidens. You know. The . . .” He groped for a name.

“Pleiades,” the scholar finished for him. “Yes, that would be a good guess—”

The Filipina woman interrupted. “Got you. Scanning time-drift of just that one cluster, back . . . back . . . yes! It’s a good match. The Pleiades, just under five thousand years ago. Wow.”

Dr. Nguyen nodded. “I expected something like this. Peng Xiao Wer, the box that formerly held the worldstone—please tell us, what did the inscription say?”

Wer recited from memory.

“Unearthed in Harappa, 1926 . . .” He then spoke the second half with an involuntary shiver. “Demon-infested. Keep in the dark.”

“Harappa, yes,” Nguyen nodded, ignoring the other part. “A center of the Indus Valley culture . . . the poor third sister of the early days of urban civilization, after Mesopotamia and Egypt. Some think it was a stunted state—cramped, paranoid, and never fully literate. We don’t really know what happened to the Indus civilization. Abandoned about 1700
BCE
, they say. Possibly a great flood weakened both main cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.”

He shook his head, and the elegant braids swished. “But this makes no sense! Why would it be speaking to us in archaic Chinese, a dialect from a millennium later? Harappa was buried under sand, by then!”

Wer shrugged. “Shall I try to ask, sir?”

The small man waved a hand in front of his face. “No. I am following a script of questions, prioritized by colleagues and associates around the world. We’ll keep to these points, then fill in gaps later. Go to the next set of characters, Peng Xiao Wer, if you would please.”

Wer felt gratified, again, by Dr. Nguyen’s unfailing politeness. The gentleman had been well brought up, for sure, skilled at how best to treat underlings.
Perhaps I will get to work for him, forever.
Not a harsh fate to contemplate, so long as Ling and the baby could join Wer, at some point soon.

He meant to prove his value to the man.

Bending over the stone, Wer carefully sketched four more of the complicated figures. Professor Yang Shenxiu had provided these versions of the questions, in a style from long ago, in order to communicate with the entity within. Dr. Nguyen’s consortium could not wait for their own worldstone to learn modern Chinese. There wasn’t time.

Not with the world in an uproar over dire things that were being said by the so-called Havana Artifact—another alien emissary-stone that an American astronaut recently retrieved from high orbit.
This
stone in front of Wer offered a way to check—in secret—on the stories being told by that other one in Washington. So far, they knew one thing.

Courier
proclaimed that the Havana Artifact had been sent by “liars.”

Wer concentrated on drawing the ancient characters right. When the last figure was finished, seeming to float, just below the surface of the egg-shaped thing, Wer spoke the question aloud, as well.

“
How
did you arrive on Earth?”

The reply came in two parts. While
Courier of Warnings
painted ideograms and uttered antiquated words, an
image
took shape nearby, starting as night’s own darkness. Anna Arroyo quickly arranged for an expanded version of the picture to billow outward from their biggest 3D display, revealing a black space vista, dusted with stars.

Meanwhile, in arch tones that seemed beautifully and appropriately old-fashioned, Professor Yang Shenxiu translated the ancient ideograms, aloud.

Pellets, hurled from point of origin,
Thrown by godlike arms of light,
Cast to drift for time immeasurable,
Through emptiness unimaginable . . .

One star, amid a powdery myriad, seemed to pulsate, as if aiming narrow, sharp twinkles outward. . . .

“Capture those constellation images!” Dr. Nguyen commanded, with no time for courtesy.

“I’m on it!” Menelaua snapped. His fingers left the crucifix and waggled in the air with desperate speed, while the islander grunted and hopped a little in the seat of his chair.