Sidespace (7 page)

“I think…a lot has changed for you in the last year, and you’ve responded in a spectacular manner to all of it. I think it’s impossible to separate out the effect each of these things has had on you—to say what’s due to the war, what’s a result of your trials on Portal Prime and the reconciliation with your mother, what’s because of Valkyrie…and what’s because of
me
.” He grabbed her and playfully tossed her off him, then quickly rolled over to position himself above her. “I do assign the majority of the credit to myself, of course.”

“Of course,” she murmured throatily and pulled him down the last couple of centimeters until the length of their bodies met. “Again?”

“Oh, yes, again.”

3

EKOS-2

P
OLE TO POLE, THE PLANET
was the most verdant, fertile world Alex had ever seen.

Unlike its sister planet, there were no stretches of desert or barrenness. Every meter supported grass at a minimum, but more often colorful foliage or healthy forests. It helped that a negligible orbital tilt kept the poles from becoming frozen tundras, but the plants weathered the chillier temperatures hardily. There were no bodies of water large enough to be called oceans, but many lakes filled with tiny mosses and algae and an abundance of rivers and creeks.

As aliens went, this breed had a lot to commend it—not the least of which was that it had probably saved her life.

She ran fingertips along her forearm, scarcely believing the transformation. She’d been accelerating up through the stages of panic when Caleb had coaxed her to the creek, cursing herself as an utter fool for acting so irresponsibly in refusing to seek professional medical help immediately. The fact that it worked out in the end didn’t bode well for her learning a lesson from the close call. But recognizing her foible was a start, right?

She let her arm drop to her side with a still incredulous shake of her head. “I wish we could harness these healing properties somehow. It would revolutionize medical care.”

“It might only work in this particular situation—to fight an infection of like kind. Regardless, I doubt we can, because healing isn’t something it did. It’s something it
is
.”

‘May I propose a name for the planet and the entity residing here?’

“I thought we were calling it ‘Ekos-2?’ ”

‘I would argue by its actions it has earned a more meaningful name.’

“Let’s hear it.”

‘Akeso, the ancient Greek goddess personifying the healing process.’

Caleb contemplated it a moment. “It’s an apt and worthy name. Thank you, Valkyrie.”

They strolled through tall, reedy grasses near the bank of one of the wider rivers they’d discovered. The climate and ambiance of the planet had proved too appealing to resist, especially when they’d spent so much time aboard the
Siyane
lately, and they had spent much of the day exploring on foot or on the bike.

Though the atmosphere as a whole was too nitrogen-rich to be comfortably breathable, the residents—resident, she had difficulty thinking of it as a single entity—altered the air wherever they traveled, increasing the oxygen content as needed. How did it know what their bodies required? Had it read Caleb’s biochemistry while it communed with him?

She watched him out of the corner of her eye. “You know, you’re sounding a bit mystical lately.”

“Honestly, I’m
feeling
a bit mystical. I cannot overstate what a sublime experience it was. To touch another mind, one so very different from my own yet so open and all-encompassing? And it’s all around us, right now.” He ran a hand, palm open, over the tips of the grass blades. “I look at this grass, and I swear I can see its life, its intelligence…see the glimpse of it I had from within.”

She’d tried to wrap her head around the idea of a singular planet-sized alien intelligence spread across billions of organic components, but she’d mostly failed. She was able to discuss the abstract concept, but it was a far cry from comprehending what the concept
meant
. Everything surrounding them was not merely alive, but part of a whole—no, that wasn’t correct. Everything surrounding them was the whole. And Caleb had experienced it from the inside.

Truth be told, she
was
jealous, though she admitted his point about her head already being a tad crowded was well taken. Hell, Valkyrie might have metaphorically—or genuinely—short-circuited on being thrust into the middle of such a mind.

On the contrary, I think we would have much in common. The structure of this type of distributed intelligence should be quite similar to my neural net architecture.

She was keeping the connection open to allow Valkyrie to see what they saw and analyze the surroundings in a way they could not.
I don’t know, Valkyrie. Our tendency is to try to relate something alien to ourselves in order to make it comprehensible. I understand what you mean about the technical structure, but I suspect what we’re dealing with here isn’t remotely like you, or like anything humans have ever created or encountered.

Well, I still think we’d have a lot in common.

She squelched a laugh. Was Valkyrie pouting?

No.

I think you are.

Not squelched enough, apparently, as Caleb cocked an eyebrow. “Something funny?”

“Valkyrie’s pouting because I said she wasn’t similar to the planet’s intelligence—to Akeso.”

‘I am not pouting.’

Caleb laughed. “Sounds like pouting to me.”

Silence fell on Valkyrie’s end, and they followed suit for several minutes, walking hand-in-hand in sight of the river. The late afternoon breeze was warm and pleasant, and the background of gurgling water blended with the planet’s ever-present hum to create a soothing melody.

‘You know what? I think you were right—I think I
was
pouting. Fascinating.’

Alex chuckled heartily. “Self-awareness is one of the first signs of true wisdom, Valkyrie. I read that somewhere.”

When they crested a sloping hill, Caleb stopped. He dropped her hand and turned in a slow circle, his eyes on the horizon. “I’ll be honest. I wouldn’t be averse to staying here for a while, but I know we shouldn’t. We came here—to the portal network—for a reason, and dallying isn’t going to bring us any closer to the answers we’re seeking.”

“No, it isn’t.” She smiled at him. “But the world won’t end if we stay another day or two.”

“That grouping there looks like a sailship.”

“Where?”

She grasped Caleb’s arm and slid her hand up it until she reached his, then nudged it to point where she meant. “See?”

“Hmm. To me it looks like a walrus’ face. It even has tusks.”

She shifted her head for a different vantage…and scowled. “And now I can’t unsee that. Thanks.”

“Anytime.” He drew both their hands back down and brought her knuckles to his lips.

Caleb had never known Earth’s constellations, and Seneca was far too young a colony to have developed a pantheon of its own, so they’d decided to make up their own constellations for the new, unfamiliar stars they lay beneath.

As a child she’d learned all the constellations, studying furiously during the week to impress her dad when he came home on the weekends. And while eventually she’d come to understand they had no objective existence, much less meaning—not only were they recognizable solely from Earth but in reality the stars in a constellation were many light-years apart—she nevertheless recalled them fondly.

Or perhaps her fondness was for the nights spent stargazing alongside her dad, nights when she was still flush with innocence and insatiable curiosity.

Here, now, she wished her father remained in her head, so he’d recall those nights as well and they could reminisce. In the weeks after the final battle against the Metigens, an increasing number of glitches and errors arose in her father’s…virtual construct, for want of a better term. Valkyrie ultimately determined that for now, she lacked the ability—the technology, the algorithms, the necessary inputs—to build and maintain an integral personality separate from but residing inside her neural network.

Valkyrie had continued to study the problem, but when the time came for her to be transferred into the
Siyane
, certain sacrifices needed to be made due to space considerations. Quantum hardware was shrinking rapidly, but not
that
rapidly. The partial essence of her father’s consciousness still existed, quarantined and rendered dormant in a subsector of Valkyrie’s processes with his permission, such as it was, and hers.

It had been an amazing gift to be able to carry a piece of him with her for a time—something no one else was able to say about a loved one they’d lost—and perhaps one day she would again.

She forcibly put aside the maudlin thoughts; this was a splendid, perfect night, and she didn’t want to ruin it with ineffectual moping. “I wonder if any of these stars harbor life.”

Caleb wound his hands behind his head. “We have a very small sample size to extrapolate from—namely, us—but I suspect because the TLF wave points here, any other intelligent beings in this space will have originated here.”

“But life could emerge independently…unless….”

“Unless life doesn’t emerge anywhere without the Metigens seeding it.”

She groaned. “I’m sorry, but they are not gods. They may be an ancient and scientifically advanced species, but that doesn’t make them gods—it just makes them old.”

4

EKOS-3

A
LEX CONSIDERED THE UNEXPECTED SCENE
on the other side of the viewport. “Are those…towers?”

After three delightful days they’d reluctantly departed Akeso to investigate the final ‘inhabited’ planet in the system. A quarter of an AU more distant from the system’s sun, it was colder and smaller than Akeso had been.

It also had dozens if not hundreds of what appeared to be towers jutting up through the atmosphere.

As they circled the planet in high orbit, more of the structures came into view. Only the tops were visible, but scans confirmed they continued down all the way to the surface. And they appeared to be constructed of timber and foliage. Long, thin limbs stretched through a thick mesosphere in twisting branches, and the structures grew progressively thicker as they descended toward the ground.

Caleb leaned in to study the scanner images. “They’re not trees—not naturally growing ones, anyway. But as for what they are? If I had to guess, I’d say this particular planet’s intelligence is trying to reach the stars.”

“Quite a deductive leap from limited data.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? I was in the head of one.”

“Granted. We should investigate where these towers originate. Let’s pick a point as far away as possible from any of the structures then go in-atmosphere.”

“Cautiously.”

She eyed him. “You think it’s hostile.”

“I think it’s aggressive. That may or may not be the same thing, but this isn’t the place to take unnecessary risks.”

“I can see that.” She took the controls and eased them through the atmosphere, as much as one could ‘ease’ through a planetary atmosphere.

When the clouds thinned, they revealed a most unusual landscape.

The roots of the nearest tower spanned multiple kilometers in every direction from the trunk—and that was above ground. Streaks of rich, fertile soil extended out in spokes beyond the roots to intersect the adjacent towers’ roots. Beyond these streaks, the land was completely barren, sucked dry of nutrients.

Cloaked, they approached the tower. The trunk measured 1.2 kilometers at the base and consisted of a massive rat’s nest of varied limbs and muted green foliage. It was without a doubt a living structure, growing ever larger and stronger—and presumably taller.

She shook her head wryly. “You were right. This life form is trying to reach the stars, and it is devoting every resource on the planet to doing so. I can appreciate the sentiment, but….”

“But it feels malevolent somehow, and the opposite of Akeso. Instead of reveling in each morning dewdrop and each blossoming of a flower’s petals, this entity is eschewing all those joys in favor of a single-minded drive to…” his brow furrowed “…leave? Is it trying to leave, or simply expand and grow?”

She regarded him with a measure of surprise. Now he was talking about dewdrops and flower petals? Akeso had really dosed him…. It wasn’t bad as such, merely unexpected, and a long way from ruthless warrior. She expected the shift in behavior to fade in time; she hadn’t decided yet whether she wanted it to. After all, the sex it had elicited—was still eliciting—bordered on transcendental.

Valkyrie updated them on the readings. ‘This planet exhibits a high level of tectonic activity. It nears the level our presence garnered on Ekos-1, but in this case it appears to be a consistent state. I hypothesize this is a result of the gathering of the plant growth from the surrounding regions into the structures.’