Far Frontiers Part 14

He closed his eyes, but not to steep. To shut out a world that was no longer safe. Nolonger comfortable.

A world in which he was entirely alone.

Desmond's death had its real world logic. He'd never had any friends. He had broken up with his last girlfriend two years earlier. Like Carter, he hadn't been in touch with his older siblings for more than a decade, and his parents were dead.

His only real contact outside of work had been Carter, and Carter had cut off all communications nearly a year before. The decline, Desmond's coworkers said, began then. It was not swift or sudden, but it was noticeable. His dark moods became darker, his emotions vacillating.

He complained of dreaming of empty places, places where he spent all of his time alone.

In the end, said the woman who found him, she hoped he had found a better place.

And when she had said that, Carter thought of sunsets on perfect summer evenings, and the kind of beauty a man could only see in his dreams.

The kind of beauty a man should have shared with someone else.

Someone he loved.

Later that month, Carter sold his lab to his three a.s.sistants. He went on a cruise to the South Pacific, a where days felt like summer and sunsets were always perfect.

He now knew the answer to all his questions. The strictures on shared dreaming were cultural and learned and could be overcome, but at great cost. Just as babies needed an adult to feed and clothe and shelter them against the world, they also needed companions in their dreams to make that reality a safer place. But as they aged, the reality molded to the mind that was strongest, and that strong mind might not know what the other dreamer needed.

Even if the dreamers were close, even if they were twins, they might not have the samereaction to the same landscape. One might find it exhilarating, the other terrifying.

The dreaming world became private before it could become dangerous.

I never felt safe here, Desmond had said. Let me go.

Carter had let him go. In the physical world too early, and in the dream world too late.

Wakefulness was a dreamlike state, and Carter wished he could find a way to wake up.

THE LAST BASTION.

by Lawrence Waft-Evans

Lawrence Watt-Evans is best known as an author of heroic fantasy, but he has always had a fondness for the darker side as well. He's published one horror novel, The Nightmare People, among his more than two dozen books. His works have appeared in Robert Bloch's Psychos, Cemetery Dance, Ancient Enchantresses, Castle Fantastic, City Limits, and elsewhere. He served as president of the Horror Writers a.s.sociation from 1994 to 1996.

Two human beings stood alone in the observation chamber, looking at projected images of the Milky Way Galaxy. On the central diagram a harsh, hostile orange tint stained most of the gigantic whirlpool of stars, leaving only a tiny sliver of friendly green, covering no more than a hundred stars, at one edge.'There's nowhere else to go," w.a.n.g said, gesturing at the screen. "We stand or fall here."

"But there are millions of other galaxies out there!" Lee protested.

"Oh, of course there are," w.a.n.g agreed. "But we can't get to any of them. They're simply too far away to reach in a single lifetime. The best minds we have ye been studying the problem for centuries, and ~re's no way to exceed the fives.p.a.ce constant."

'That's what they said about fours.p.a.ce," Lee said, 'but even if there isn't, or if we can't find it in time, do we need to do it in a single lifetime?"

"You want to spend a thousand years in stasis, at the mercy of a bunch of self-maintaining machines? You more faith in our technology than I do."

"I was thinking more along the lines of a multigen~rational journey-boost an oneill or even a small planet into fives.p.a.ce. It's just a matter of engineering."

w.a.n.g shook his head. "We don't have the resources on hand," he said. "If our ancestors had given the matter some real thought, and started preparing, then yes, it could be done, but now it's too late. We don't have the energy sources we'd need to ramp an entire planet into fives.p.a.ce, we don't have the resources to keep an astellar ecology stable for a journey that long-remember how dark and empty it is in intergalactic Not enough light to power anything important, enough matter to collect for anything."

"You've run the numbers?"

"Of course. To see our descendants safely to M3 I would require everything we have, and would have a safety margin so small the odds of completing the jour- are fifteen to one against." He sighed. "And just in case, I checked my conclusions with the top theoretiamong the other groups. They all confirm my figures."

Lee grimaced at the mention of the other surviving individual-human factions; her own clan was Purist, and had always opposed any cooperation with cyborgs and genengineers. Events had forced the alliance when she was still a child, despite its unpopularity, but she had never entirely reconciled herself to it. The others weren't really hwnan anymore, by her standards.

But they were still close. They were still individuals, still had human concerns. And they had joined the naturals in fleeing here, to the edge of the galaxy.The cooperation was so complete now that the galactic map didn't even show the three factions as separate territories; all their systems were shared.

They had all fought so long and so hard to maintain their individuality-and now w.a.n.g, the coordinator for their defense, said the fight was over.

'There must be so~ne way," she said.

"I've told you my proposed solution."

"I'd rather try that thousand-year stasis. The odds sound better."

w.a.n.g sighed. "We don't know the odds on negotiating; n.o.body's tried it in millennia.

The Link may have changed. It's got the rest of the galaxy; why should it insist on taking our pitiful handful of systems?"

"Because that's what it does, w.a.n.g!" Lee said. "It's hungry It wants data and energy and matter, as much as it can get. It's pursued humanity everywhere we've gone, trying to absorb us."

"The old stories say that it thinks it's doing people a favor by a.s.similating them," w.a.n.g said. "It thinks it's doing it for our own good."

'That's what it says. I don't believe it."

"Oh, I think it's sincere, even if I don't want to be a.s.similated any more than you do."

'~ Lee looked very doubtful indeed, but didn't argue further. Instead she asked, "Have you spoken to the others?"

w.a.n.g nodded. "I left your clan until last-I knew you'd be the hardest to convince."

'They've all agreed?"

"Yes. Some of them imposed conditions, but they've agreed."

'They're all ready to surrender?"

"It's not a surrender," w.a.n.g insisted. "It's a negotiation."

'It's offering to stay on the reservation," Lee said. "It's offering to become its pets, a bunch of animals in a zoo, a museum exhibit. I call that a surrender."

"A surrender would be letting the Link a.s.similate us," w.a.n.g said. "I won't do that."

"You may not have a choice."

With that, Lee turned and stalked away, toward the lift. w.a.n.g watched her go. He understood her feelings, he also understood reality.

He looked up at the galactic map. That sliver of was so tiny, the orange smear so vast."I still can't believe they agreed to talk this way," said as she watched the ship descend smoothly, gracefully down through the cloudless blue sky. 'I thought the Link never let any of its units detach for even an instant!"

"I told you they would be reasonable," Shmit said.

Lee grimaced at the unnaturally musical sound of the cyborg's electronically enhanced voice and fought back a bitter remark. The Link had been created by cyborgs, thousands of years ago. Of course Shmit would be more tolerant of the Link than it deserved.

And Lee didn't want to listen to any machine man telling her "I told you so."

The ship settled gently onto the pavement, and w.a.n.g and the others started forward.

Before they had covered half the distance an opening appeared in the ship's side and a figure emerged.

It looked human enough, but Lee knew better. Reluctantly, she began walking closer, but she didn't hurry; let the others get the preliminaries out of the way, she thought The less time she spent close to the Link representative, the better, so far as she was concerned.

The representatives wore a smooth, formfitting red garment that made it plain the creature was neither male nor female; its skin was a lovely golden brown, its black hair trimmed short. It was inhumanly sleek and beautiful-but it moved awkwardly, unevenly, as it stumbled down the ramp the ship had extruded.

"Welcome to Refuge," w.a.n.g began when his party and the Link representative were a couple of meters apart The representative held up a hand signaling for him to wait, staggered, then straightened up. It took a deep breath, let it out, and then spoke.

"I'm sorry," it said. Its voice, as lovely as Shmit's, was unsteady. It cleared its throat and added, "This is hard for us-for me. Give me a moment."

"We appreciate your willingness to meet with us under these conditions," w.a.n.g said.

"It's important," the representative said. "We know that, so we'll try to cooperate. You've all had years of practice being unlinked; but it's new for us. For me."

"I understand," w.a.n.g said, though Lee doubted that he actually did. The cyborgs, withtheir implants and gadgets, might have some idea what it would be like for a single unit of the Link to be detached and forced to operate independently, but a natural human like w.a.n.g-or Lee-could have only the vaguest understanding of the experience.

The representative took another deep breath, then stood up straight and recited, "You understand that as a single individual, I cannot make a final decision for the entire Link if you present me with an option we had not previously considered?"

"Of course," w.a.n.g said. "We wish to make our pro posals, discuss options, then send you back so that the Link can think the situation over."

"Good. That's what we want, too. What I want."

Lee had now joined the group, and got a good look at the representative. Up close it looked considerably less human-wiring was visible along its fingers and neck, there were slits that Lee thought might be gills, and some of the black fibers on its head, clearly not human hairs, moved independently. Its eyes had tiny insets that Lee guessed were added sensory equipment, and the gleaming blue biting surfaces in its mouth were definitely not teeth.

Some of its distant ancestors had been human, but it was not.

"Shall we go inside, where we can sit down?" w.a.n.g suggested.

'That would be good."

A few moments later the entire party was gathered around a conference table. w.a.n.g had offered to wait until the representative had rested and adjusted to the local climate, but the representative had declined the offer.

"The sooner I get this done and can rejoin myself, the better," it explained. "You have no idea how uncomfortable this is for me. It's like being blind and alone."

"You aren't alone," w.a.n.g said. 'We're here."

The representative didn't answer, but simply stared at bun in astonished disgust.

"It's not the same, I'm sure," Lee said. "Now, can we get down to business? I'm not that much more comfortable than our guest is." She gestured at the others gathered around the table.

They were all individuals, not part of any hivemind Link, and they were all of human ancestry, but Lee was the only Purist. w.a.n.g, Mez, and Kita were fellow naturals, their flesh unpolluted with machinery, their genes perhaps cleaned a little but still entirely human.But Sbmit, Maet, and Das were cyborgs, with metal and plastic built into them. Llur, Saffa, Berene, and Tint were genens, their genes modified at their ancestors' whims, and each had visible features-skin, eyes, hair-that had never evolved on Earth.

And Ashi and Ho were both genetically engineered and cyborged.

A hundred years ago, this gathering could never have happened. The human factions had kept themselves separate. Pressure from the Link had driven them to this mixing, which Lee could only see as potlution.

w.a.n.g stood up. "We all know the situation," he said. 'The Link wants the entire galaxy, and we prefer to remain as we are, independent individuals not part of a network, free to arrange our societies as we choose. Up until now the Link has pretty much expanded as it pleased, driving us into a smaller and smaller volume of the galaxy, and we've reached a point where we can retreat no farther. Rather than simply give in, though, we've asked you to come here to give us a chance to convince the Link not to a.s.similate ~ur paltry handful of worlds. We asked you to come there as an individual, not part of the Link, partly because of our distrust of you and our fear that if the Link were permitted the tiniest access to Refuge that the entire planet would be absorbed into the system before we could do anything to prevent it, but also-and this part you may not have realized-because we wanted to remind you what it's like to be an individual human being. We think it's a very special experience, one that the Link tends to forget or underrate, and we don't want to see it eliminated from the galaxy. Surely, the Link can see some value in maintaining the few of us here, as a possible resource, a source of diversity?"

The representative stared silently at w.a.n.g for a moment, then said, 'There's so much you don't understand."

"I'm sure you're right, that we don't appreciate how much better and happier we would be as part of the Link, but nonetheless, we want..

"No, no, no," the representative interrupted. 'That's not what we... what I mean at all."

w.a.n.g blinked.

"What do you mean, then?" Llur sang.

"We need these systems," the Link representative said. "We need them urgently. We don't want to harm you, though-we understand you better than you might think. What we propose to do is to pay you for them."

"What good is payment if you're going to absorb our entire world?" Kita demanded,before Lee could say anything.

"It depends what form the payment takes, doesn't it?" the representative asked, lisping slightly. "We propose to pay you with the resources of several star systems, including technology we don't believe you have, that will permit you to launch two or three planets into fives.p.a.ce, bound for whatever destination you choose."

"You want us out of your galaxy entirely, is that it?" Lee demanded, rising angrily to her feet. "d.a.m.n it, you monster, it's our galaxy, too!"

"Not anymore," the Link representative said. "mdividual consciousness has been driven into this tiny fringe; wouldn't you rather have an entire new galaxy?"

Several voices spoke at once, growing louder as they tried to a.s.sert themselves, and in a moment everyone was shouting. w.a.n.g held up his hands for order, and eventually silence returned.

"You said you need our systems," he said. "For more s.p.a.ce? What will you do then, when you've filled it? Follow us to M31?"

'There are millions of galaxies," the representative said, which Lee found an eerie echo of her own words of just a few days before. "You take one, we'll take another."

"Will just one more be enough?" Kita asked sarcastically. "If this one isn't big enough for you-"

"We won't have this one much longer," the representative said.

A stunned silence fell.

"Why not?" Lee asked at last.

The representative struggled to find the words it needed. At last it said, 'There was an experiment. An accident. A few centuries ago. The Link was attempting an upgrade, and the test portion became something else. We call it the Oneness." It pulled a display chit from its pocket and tapped a command; a galactic map appeared in the air above the conference table.