Noumenon Infinity Page 29

  “Careful!” the manager hissed, flicking switches as Tan’s careless foot flipped them on or off.

  Lights in the bay flickered, and the alien looked about, taking note.

  “They can see,” Tan said excitedly. “They can detect the visible spectrum!”

  He clawed his way to the top of the dash, until he was perched on the highest dials, one hand braced against the window so that he wouldn’t topple over. Still, Böhm kept one hand on his lower back, just in case.

  “Flicker the lights again,” Tan ordered, after the manager set them right. “Maybe we can communicate that way.”

  The man complied, flipping the switches at random, just trying to get a reaction out of their guests.

  All three seemed fascinated, their heads and arms moving rapidly, taking note.

  “Waa,” Tan said quietly in amazement, his other hand coming up to mirror the first.

  He felt like a child again, and for a moment was whisked back to his eight-year-old self. His grandparents had taken him to an aquarium market—the name of which was lost to him now. He’d palmed the glass there, too, adding to the smudges of the children who’d come before, pressing his nose against it, enamored of the dragon fish, and the octopuses with their graceful gliding.

  The alien before him was just as graceful in its floating, defying gravity much in the same way the cephalopods defied it in their swimming.

  The creature’s attention came back to him, its head swinging on its joint in its horror-movie fashion.

  Then, the two limbs nearest its head shot forward, banging into the glass at force. Tan reeled backward in surprise, and only Böhm’s presence kept him from toppling to the floor and onto his head.

  It had pressed the base of its grasping feet to the window, just as he’d had his hands splayed.

  The gesture was sudden, but not violent. If anything it was . . . friendly.

  With a hearty push from Böhm, Tan found himself settled near the window once more. His hands had gone clammy—almost tacky—where he applied them to the window. Gently, he covered one of its feet with his hand, then the other. It did not shy away.

  It was too much. This day, all too much.

  Emotion got the better of him. His surprise and fear and revulsion and hope and longing were all mixed together in an overwhelming concoction that fizzed inside his soul like a carbonated drink, threatening to burst out as tears any minute. One more shake of the bottle would do it.

  They held their position for long moments, he and the alien. The manager stopped flickering the lights, and Böhm noticeably held his breath.

  What do we do now? Tan thought at it. Where do we go from here?

  As though in answer, it drew back, clutching its foot to its chest before letting its body drift back to its shuttle.

  The other two followed it, and as the trio climbed into their pod, Tan let out a shaky breath.

  The aliens exited as they’d entered—first the clawed machine, then the spiny white one, and lastly, the dark thin one. It hung out the shuttle’s open aperture for a long time, two limbs in, two limbs out, as though contemplating the situation.

  Do they feel hope like we do? Tan wondered. Are they happy? Curious? Do they have any idea what this means to us? Does it mean the same to them?

  Perhaps this was a proverbial walk in the park for them. After all, there were at least two species present, if not a third. Perhaps they met new life forms on a regular basis and had no idea what kind of a world-shattering experience they’d just participated in.

  The dark one’s head swiveled once more, taking in the bay from corner to corner. Then it folded up its limbs and slid inside, the triangular hatch swooping into place seconds after.

  It took a long while for Tan to realize that the pod was patiently waiting to be let back out into space again. But once they reopened the bay doors, the pod glided away, leaving everything as they’d found it, not a shuttle or a human or a panel worse for wear.

  Böhm said they should return to the bridge immediately, make up a full report to submit to everyone aboard.

  Tan heard him. And that was important, yes. Everyone had the right to know—needed to understand they’d made peaceful first contract. That it was, thus far, a positive in this upside-down of a reality.

  But there was another priority that called to him. Someone who needed him. Two someones by now, he was certain.

  So he left the hangar’s control room and made his way back to med bay. The birthing room was quieter than he thought it would be. The birthing chair had been removed, replaced by a bed for Ming-Na to rest in. Mother and baby were both there, one tucked safely in the arms of the other. Two medics stood in the corner quietly dithering among themselves, and Tan slid in without interference. Böhm waited in the hall.

  “We’re all still alive,” Ming-Na said. Her voice was hoarse, and she coughed on the back end of her sentence. “Everything went well, I assume?”

  “Better than I could have hoped for. I’ll tell you everything, but first—”

  He drew back the edge of the blanket in which his daughter was swaddled. “You did it,” he said with pride. The baby’s eyes were closed, her breathing steady.

  Ming-Na nodded, but there was a sadness behind her smile. “She . . . she hasn’t been awake yet,” she said slowly.

  He shook his head and shrugged, confused. “What does that mean?”

  “They, uh, don’t know yet,” she said. “Her breathing is strong, her heart is good, they said everything—” she gave a mirthless half laugh “—everything is normal. Except that it’s usually a bad sign if a baby isn’t awake during the birth. You know, it’s strange for someone to get shoved through the eye of a needle and not . . . not notice.”

  Her lip trembled, and he could see the tears coming. Her eyes were shiny, alight with worry. He kissed her quickly, but if anything, that made her tears flow more freely.

  “They’re going to get an EEG machine in here, just to check,” she said when he pulled away.

  “She’ll be fine,” he said confidently. She has to be. Everything went so right with . . . with them. This has to go right, too. “Won’t you, little shrimp?”

  Perhaps that would be her milk name. They would not name her properly just yet. It was too soon, and despite the auspiciousness of the day, they would not risk inviting more misfortune.

  “I have hope,” Ming-Na said, as though trying to convince herself more so than her husband. “Hope for our future.”

  He kissed both of his girls on the head in turn. “As do I.”

  Resurgence

  Chapter Six

  Anatoly: The Post-Modern Narcissus

  Convoy Seven

  Eight Hundred and Fifty-Five Years Since Jamal the Eighteenth’s Engineering Discovery

  March 13, 1079 Relaunch

  6666 CE

  Vermilion, white, purple, and ultramarine sashes crossed Anatoly Straifer the Thirty-Ninth’s torso, draping from his right shoulder down to his left hip. Four sashes for four stations. He smoothed one, pressing its wrinkles down into the black of his formal garb. He unbuttoned the top two buttons on his collar, exposing the gray of a Revealer. Only on a day like this could he openly display the gray in such an audacious manner.

  Six inverted triangles, overlapping and splayed like a hand of playing cards, fanned out from the gray collar. Composed of thin, embroidered lines, they could not be seen except from up close. Six triangles for six Reveals. All made by previous genetic iterations, dating back to his Prime Ancestor, Reginald Straifer of Earth. And he hoped to add a seventh before the day was out.

  This was a proud day, one the convoy had been aiming for, true and straight like an arrow flung from a bow, for thousands of years. Now the arrow’s nesting was in sight.

  In less than eighteen hours, the Web would be complete. And he, as head of engineering, would lead them all in celebration.

  He took a deep breath, puffing out his chest, holding in the air to steady himself for a br
ief moment of meditation. Nervous energy wracked his body—excitement threatened to explode from his mouth and ears and fingertips. He had to relax. Rein in the emotions.

  The breath seeped out slowly, and he forced his lungs tight against his spine, making sure they were completely empty. He counted to ten, then let himself breathe normally.

  He didn’t feel any calmer.

  “I.C.C., are the Extensions I picked out ready?”

  “They are prepped and ready for interfacing on Slicer.”

  “Thank you. I need to imbue them, first. See that maintenance has them in a life-support dock in half an hour.”

  “Shall I alert Captain Straifer? She has requested to accompany you for most of the day. Since you are a dual embodiment, she thought it would be most appropriate for you to experience the completion of the sphere together.”

  “Fine.” The answer was terser than he’d aimed for.

  To be part of a dual embodiment meant that you and another crew member shared a genetic history, but were not direct clones. Anatoly and Joanna were fraternal twins, the biological children of Esperanza Straifer, Revealer of I.C.C.’s Safety.

  Anatoly resented being one half of a duo, however. It meant none of his accomplishments ever really belonged to him—they were shared, and not just with his previous iterations.

  Ever since Jamal Kaeden the Eighteenth had Revealed the Resonance of Reiteration, the people of the convoy had come to accept that there was a depth to the universe they could not fully understand. And part of that depth was the resonating continuum that let living people connect to their genetic ancestors.

  No one knew how it worked, and no one since the Revealer of Resonance had actually seen their ancestors, but everyone, including Anatoly, fully believed that their major decisions were influenced by people from their past.

  The prevailing theories of ancestor resonance suggested that each individual left their mark on the Inter Convoy Computer as a subdimensional reverberation that became entangled with the body and mind of the line’s current iteration. That their shared genetics gave them access to one another. When Anatoly died, the ships would retain his essence and pass his mark on to the next Anatoly.

  Scientists had been trying to identify crew members’ individual SD frequencies for centuries, but hadn’t been able to isolate them. All they could figure was that it must have to do with living aboard the ships. They saw no reason why Earthlings—even Earth-bound clones—should experience the same internal continuum.

  I.C.C., for the most part, did not agree or disagree with the crew’s assumptions. It had been studying Jamal the Eighteenth’s case for centuries, with little progress. Perhaps it could not isolate the answer because it was too close to the question. Perhaps the frequencies were embedded within the artificial patterns that made up its consciousness. Perhaps that was how it had been able to gain such a vast and mature self-awareness. Earth, when the convoy had left it a thousand years ago, had been unable to create artificial intelligence. Perhaps there had never been a true AI before or after I.C.C.’s inception. Who knew anymore?

  Though Anatoly had never seen or spoken to his ancestors, he’d been able to feel the constant presence of the past since he was a boy. The internal pressure of the continuum was unmistakable.

  He could feel them now, steeling his nerves and easing his jitters.

  “Tell Joanna to meet me on Slicer, not here,” he said to I.C.C. Her name tasted like stale bread on his tongue.

  Entering the hall outside his cabin, he was met immediately by boiling chatter. It rolled up and down the halls like a wave of pure energy. On his way to the shuttle bay he nodded at acquaintances and exchanged pleasantries with friends and coworkers. They all congratulated him, slapped him on the back, shook his hand, gave any little gesture of appreciation they could. Though this was a day that belonged to everyone, he had the honor of placing the capstone. The last portions of the Web would be joined by his ethereal hand.

  “Thank you,” an old man said, grasping one of Anatoly’s hands between both of his. “Thank you. The medical staff postponed all retirements so that we could see this. It will be something we carry with us, always. Thank you.”

  By the time he boarded a shuttle, Anatoly’s emotions overwhelmed him, making it hard to concentrate. He called upon his genetic ancestors, conjuring an image of each past Revealer in his mind, looking to them for assurance and strength: Reginald Straifer the First, Revealer of the Anomaly; Reginald Straifer the Fourth, a Revealer of Its Power; Nika Marov the Eleventh, Revealer of Abandonment; Esperanza Straifer the Only, Revealer of I.C.C.’s Safety; Anatoly Straifer the Ninth, Revealer of Nodular Function; Anatoly Straifer the Twenty-Third, Revealer of New Construction.

  Anatoly glanced out the window as the shuttle was swallowed up by the construction ship, Slicer. He’d always felt the ship had an ominous quality to it, though he couldn’t put a finger on why. Its hull design was significantly different from the other ships, earthy, rock-like. But that wasn’t it. He spent most of his waking work hours aboard; it was strange that he should always feel like he was arriving someplace dark and exotic.

  The feeling was even more pronounced today, of all days.

  When Anatoly stepped out of the shuttle, the sharp scent of metal struck his nose. All of the other ships were permeated with human smells—food, body odor, soaps, oils, fabrics, what-have-you. But on Slicer, the inorganic ruled.

  A coppery taste immediately settled on the roof of his mouth, as it usually did. It wouldn’t leave no matter how many times he tried to gulp it away.

  “Here they are, sir,” said a maintenance man in a tight spacesuit, helmet tucked under one arm. He gestured to the back of the gigantic bay, where a row of six Extension units stood like robotic soldiers, waiting for the call to duty. “The ones you said respond best.”

  “Thank you,” Anatoly said with a quick smile. He approached the autons, the Extensions, feeling for them with his mind. Only those in the builder departments had implants anymore, strictly for using the life-sized puppets. Most people could control four at once, letting one human worker with Extensions do the normal work of five crewmen. A few of the top experts could control eight or nine at a time. The most ever successfully guided at once was ten.

  Anatoly felt most comfortable with six. He turned them on in unison, feeling each connection as a thread of streaming information. These particular puppets were his favorites; they responded a fraction of a second faster to his commands. Anatoly’s friends had teased him for professing to feel a lag in other Extensions, but it was true. Just because others couldn’t sense the delay didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  The biological parts of the puppets—the pieces of brain that needed to be continuously grown and replaced—were originally elephant-hybrid. A few centuries ago, though, the crew had swapped the pachyderm cells for full-human because they were more efficient.

  The human gray matter had to be grown from clone stock, and whose DNA they’d used was a closely guarded secret. Anatoly suspected it was a little bit of everyone, and that the reason he connected best with these six puppets was because the cells in their processors were his.

  “Everything up to speed?” asked Joanna’s voice from behind him. She’d entered through a side door. Apparently she’d been aboard Slicer for some time.

  “They feel fine,” he said, trying to keep his tone upbeat. His autonomic response to her presence was irritation. Luckily, today he was able to squash the feeling before it had a chance to root.

  Joanna’s formal wear was identical to his, down to the gray undershirt displaying the six embroidered points. He’d always been especially peeved that she got to display the marks which his direct clones had earned. Other iterations of Joanna had revealed nothing. Why should she prance around with Anatoly’s successes?

  But that was unfair. In that case, why should he carry Reginald’s marks, or Nika’s? Dual embodiment meant they accessed the same resonance. He should be proud to share the connect
ion.

  Should being the operative word.

  Her uniform did have one difference: a small gold star over her left collarbone, signifying her station as a captain.

  “You sure you’ll finish on schedule?” she asked.

  “Of course. We could have finished a week ago. We waited.” He thought that had been obvious. Who’d want to finish something this important without a spectacle? The entire crew would have been in an uproar had the builders quietly placed the capstone on the endeavor. “Is the fleet ready to move?”

  “Yes, the captains are standing by for the order. On your mark.”

  “Thank you. I just need enough time to get the Extensions into place, then we can fall back.”

  “Of course.” She glanced at the autons. “You won’t be sad if something happens to them? I hear they’re your favorites.”

  “I’ll find others. The mission is more important. As long as the convoy is safe, I’ll be all right.”

  They could only guess what would happen when the Web was finally complete. They hoped it would automatically turn on and begin storing energy from LQ Pyx. But they weren’t sure. Nothing so quaint as an on/off switch had ever been identified.

  Anything could happen, hence the orders to move the ships out of range—orbiting too close could prove dangerous.

  Sometimes Anatoly felt like Gregor Mendel, messing about with the cross-pollination of peas without any concept of deoxyribonucleic acid. Similarly, the human engineers built the alien devices with only a rudimentary understanding of their functionality.

  Take the SD pockets—the infinity gaps. He knew that they worked, knew they were stable, knew they sucked energy into an SD. But why they did so, and how they did so, was still beyond his understanding. As of now, only a few hours before they were to activate the nodes, they knew energy went into the Web, but they still had no idea how to get it back out.

  Maybe it was fitting that Zetta had gone off with Noumenon Ultra. At least with the split portion of the convoy, it had a use. If it had remained, with its original purpose intact, it would have sat empty, dark and untouched. The innovative battery system, the only one of its kind ever designed, would have been more of a novelty item than anything useful.