Old Earth Stories Part 10

"That would get rid of them," Rhoda said.

"That it would. Of course, the Squeem may be useful. We could use them, as they once used us. A galaxy-spanning telepathic network "

"We don't need them in Sol system for that. We have their homeworld."

"True." Kaser eyed Rhoda. "The technology's in place. The only question remains, do we use it?"

Rhoda thought it through.

The Squeem occupation had changed human perceptions of the galaxy, and humanity's place in it. A historic loss of innocence.

Now humans were tentatively moving out beyond Sol system once more. And everywhere they went, they found life. Intelligences swarming and squabbling. A kind of galactic society, a ramshackle pecking order based on avarice, theft, and the subjugation of junior races.

And for humanity, nothing but threat.

The black holes in Jupiter were clues to a closely guarded secret, which Rhoda hadn't even shared with Reg Kaser. The Squeem invasion hadn't been the first hostile alien incursion into Sol system. Some centuries back invaders called something like "Qax," who would occupy Earth in their turn sometime in the future, had come back in time come back in time to secure their victory over mankind. In the course of the battle, miniature black holes had been hurled into Jupiter. During the Squeem occupation, knowledge of this event had mostly been lost, and was only now being pieced back together by the historians. But the mortal wound inflicted on Jupiter was unarguable. to secure their victory over mankind. In the course of the battle, miniature black holes had been hurled into Jupiter. During the Squeem occupation, knowledge of this event had mostly been lost, and was only now being pieced back together by the historians. But the mortal wound inflicted on Jupiter was unarguable.

Some a.n.a.lysts, poring over the historical reconstructions, argued that the Qax invasion might be only decades away, in the future.

Even beyond the Qax, there was the apparent original source of much of the galaxy's technology (though n.o.body knew for sure): the Xeelee. Secretive, xenophobic, indifferent. And so far ahead, they made the rest of the galaxy's inhabitants look like tree dwellers.

The future held nothing but peril for mankind. Hierarchies of enemies. And that was the basis on which Rhoda must make her decision.

Rhoda stared down at the ice landscape of Rhea, imagining the stranded Squeem swarming within. "It won't be revenge," she said. "Call it insurance. Look what the Squeem did to us. This will be one danger eliminated."

"We're setting a course for the future, then."

"The future leaves us no choice. And if this makes us harder as a species, good. When the weapon's ready, send Hume up here, would you? He ought to watch this, as the Squeem made Harry Gage watch. Let this this act be remembered too." act be remembered too."

Kaser stood. "I'll call the weapons crew."

THE SEER AND THE SILVERMAN.

His mother's screaming filled the lifedome. "He's gone. The Ghosts have taken him. Lethe, Benj is gone!"

Shocked awake, Donn Wyman grabbed a robe and ran out of his cabin.

His mother and father were in the plaza, in their sleep clothes, clinging to each other. They were outside Benj's cabin. The door was open. Donn could see at a glance that the room was empty.

Only seconds after wakening, he had a sickening, immediate sense of what was wrong. The abduction from out of the heart of his home was bewildering, as if part of reality had been cut away, not just a human being, not just his brother.

"Now, Rima, don't take on." Samm Wyman was trying to calm his wife. He was a careworn man, slight of build and with his family's pale blue eyes. Donn knew that spreading calm was his father's fundamental strategy in life.

But Rima was struggling in his arms. "He's gone! You can see for yourself!" Her hair was wild, her face tattoos unanimated, just dead black scars on her cheeks.

"Yes, but you're jumping to conclusions, you always think the worst straightaway."

She pushed him away. "Oh, get off me, you fool. What else could it be but an abduction? If he'd gone out through the ports, the lifedome AI would know about it. So what good is being calm? Do you think you can just wish wish this away?" this away?"

Donn said uncertainly, "Mother "

"Oh, Donn help me look. Just in case he's somewhere in the dome, somewhere the AI hasn't spotted him."

Donn knew that was futile, but they had to look. "All right."

Rima snapped at her husband. "And you find out if he's anywhere else on the Reef. And call the Commissary. If the Coalition are going to meddle in our affairs, they may as well make themselves useful. They could start by finding out where every Ghost on the Reef was last night and the Silvermen."

She stalked off and began throwing open doors around the rim of the plaza. The bots followed her, their aged servos whirring.

Samm eyed his elder son. "I already called Commissary Elah. Who knows? Maybe the Coalition goons will be some use for once. She's just taking out her anger on me. She'll take it out on you, too, before she's done. It's her way. Don't let it upset you."

"I won't, Dad. But this is bad, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so, son. Go on, get searching."

Donn cut across the center of the plaza, the lifedome's central floor s.p.a.ce. Much of it was given over to green, for the crew of this old ship, his mother's distant ancestors, had crossed the stars with a chunk of forest brought from Earth itself, a copse of mature trees, oak, alder, and lime, old enough to have wrapped thick roots around the struts of the lifedome's frame. But Donn, twenty-five years old, had never been to Earth, and to him the trees were just furniture.

Of course, there was no sign of Benj. Why would he have hidden away among the trees? Benj, at twenty-one, liked his comforts. And even if he was here, the AI's surveillance systems would have known about it.

Something whirred past Donn's face, tiny, metallic. It was a robot insect. And a fine spray of water descended on him. He lifted his face and saw droplets condensing out of the air, an artificial rain born in the summit of the lifedome and falling all around him. Above the rain, the transparent dome showed a star field that had barely changed for centuries: the a.s.sociation, a cl.u.s.ter of stars dominated by the Boss, a single monstrous star a million times as bright as Earth's sun, an unforgiving point of light. He was getting slowly wet, but he didn't mind; he found the sensation oddly comforting on this difficult morning.

"Beautiful, isn't it? The star field."

The smooth voice made him start. He turned.

Commissary Elah stood beside him. Her eyes were large and dark, her gaze fixed on his face, calculating, judgmental. Taller than Donn, she was dressed in a Commissary's floor-length black robe, a costume so drab it seemed to suck all the light out of the air. Her scalp was shaved, a starkness that emphasized the beauty of her well-defined chin and cheekbones, and her skin gleamed with droplets of the artificial rain. Donn had no idea how old she was.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she said.

Something about her made Donn pull his robe tighter around his body. "Commissary. It's good of you to have come out so quickly. My parents will be rea.s.sured "

"I hope so. I've brought some specialist help. A woman called Eve Raoul a Virtual, actually, but quite expert. This is what we're here for, the Commission for Historical Truth. To help." Her accent sounded odd to a Reefborn, slightly strangulated at the back of the throat an accent from Earth. "The Coalition understands."

"I suppose it must," Donn said. "If it seeks to rule."

"Not to rule," said Elah gently. "To join all of scattered mankind behind a common purpose. And by helping you sort out issues like this with the Ghosts "

"n.o.body knows for sure if the Ghosts are behind these abductions."

She eyed him. "But the Ghosts aren't denying it. Are you loyal to the Ghosts or your family, Donn Wyman?"

"I " He didn't know what to say to that direct question; he didn't think in such terms. "Why must I choose?"

She reached out with a pale hand and stroked the trunk of an oak tree. "Remarkable, these plants. So strange. So strong!"

"They are trees. Don't you have any on Earth anymore?"

She shrugged. "Probably. In laboratories. Earth has other purposes now than to grow trees." She glanced around. "You know, I've visited the Miriam Berg Miriam Berg several times. But I've never stood in this very spot, beneath these trees. Trade, your profession, isn't it?" several times. But I've never stood in this very spot, beneath these trees. Trade, your profession, isn't it?"

"I'm an interspecies factor, specializing in relations with the Ghost enclaves."

"It's all so deliriously archaic. And anti-Doctrinal, of course, your way of life, your ship's existence, its very name, all relics of a forbidden past!" She laughed. "But don't worry, we've no intention of turning you out summarily. All things in time." She pushed at the earth, the gra.s.s, with a bare foot. "We're on the ship's axis here, yes? Over the spine. Your mother's family came to the Reef in mis ship, didn't they, a thousand years ago? I imagine there are access hatches. Is it possible to reach the drive pod from here?"

"That's nothing to do with you." Samm came bustling up. Beside Elah's cool composure, his father looked a crumpled mess, Donn thought, his hair sticking up like the gra.s.s under their feet, his face shining with the sweat of sleep.

"I apologize," Elah said easily. "You did invite me here."

With his arms outstretched, Samm escorted her away from the copse. "To help with looking for Benj. Not to go snooping around the Miriam.'" Miriam.'" But as she walked with him, he backed down, nervous of offending the new agency from Earth that had taken over all their lives. "We're all distressed." But as she walked with him, he backed down, nervous of offending the new agency from Earth that had taken over all their lives. "We're all distressed."

"I understand."

Donn lingered for another few seconds under the artificial rain. He wondered why his father should care about the Commissary, or any Coalition agent, snooping around this thousand-year-old heap of junk. Maybe he had trade goods tucked down there in the spine given the Coalition's new tax codes, Donn thought that was quite likely but if so, he couldn't have signaled it any more clearly. Not subtle, Donn's father, whatever other qualities he might have.

But as Donn stood there, the complexities of Reef politics faded, and the reality of his brother's loss crowded back into his head, the true story of the day. For months, the abductions had been an arbitrary plague. n.o.body could rest, for at any moment, you could be taken, too, from the most secure place. What a horror it was. And now it had come here, to his own family. He wondered, in fact, how it was he felt so calm himself. Shock, perhaps.

He trailed after his father, and the Commissary. And in a lounge at the edge of the plaza, he found a Virtual woman trying to console his mother.

"Before I died, I spent most of my working life exploring the principles of remote translation systems."

The visitor sat beside Rima on a couch. Donn's mother's face was twisted with grief and anger. Bots hovered before them, bearing trays of drinks and pastries breakfast; it was still early.

The visitor was slim, modestly dressed in a pale blue coverall. Her hair was gray, and she pulled at a stray lock of it absently. Donn had never seen anybody with gray hair before, though he knew it had once been the default shade for the aging. Evidently the visitor's projection was good enough to fool the serving bots, but Donn observed that her interfacing with the chair wasn't quite right, and a haze of tiny pixels shimmered around the underside of her legs.

Rima asked, irritated, impatient, "Remote translation systems?"

Commissary Elah said, "Teleportation, to you and me. Donn Wyman, meet Eve Raoul. The expert I told you about."

Eve stood. Donn clumsily offered this Virtual visitor a hand to shake. She bowed, apparently unoffended. "I'm sorry to meet you in such circ.u.mstances."

"Eve Raoul," Donn said, "do you have a connection to the the Raoul, Jack Raoul?" Raoul, Jack Raoul?"

"He was my husband. I died before him." She gestured at her slim body. "It's thanks to him that this representation was reconstructed from my old Notebooks. He liked to have me around in person to counsel him about quantum mechanics and the like, in the course of his work. And in the work he did, his dealings with the Ghosts, there was a lot lot of that." of that."

Elah said, "Eve is a specialist in the sort of technologies that seem to be deployed here-abduction through some sort of teleport device, apparently. And so we employ her to offer advice and counseling to relatives of abductees."

"Counseling," said Rima, skeptical. "Jack Raoul died eight years ago." She glared at Elah. "Or rather he was executed for his 'crimes.' He was pretty old by that time wasn't he?"

"Over two hundred years old," Eve said softly. "He left my Notebooks to the Commission, and to the Ghosts."

"He must have loved you," Donn blurted. Jack Raoul was well remembered here, a hero for the Reef's multispecies community, for his work in bringing about constructive working relationships between humans and Ghosts. Evidently, he was capable of great pa.s.sion, too.

But Eve grimaced. "I was his legacy to an alien species. That tells you all you need to know about what it was like to be loved by Jack Raoul. However, here I am. And, since I know you're thinking it, it's more than a hundred and fifty years since my own death."

Rima snorted. "Then what use are you? How can these Notebooks of yours be up-to-date?"

"It's the best we have," Elah said sternly. "Rima, much human knowledge was lost during the Qax Occupation of Earth. That was a deliberate policy of the occupying power, in fact. One of our purposes in recontacting lost communities like this one."

"We weren't lost," said Donn.

Elah plowed on. "Our purpose is to reacquire such lost knowledge. And Eve and her Notebooks are a treasure. It's good of her to work with the Coalition, especially after the difficulties surrounding her husband's case."

Eve ignored this barrage of euphemism. "I have to tell you, though," she admitted, "that I may not be much help at all. Human technologists have never got very far with teleportation. How could a translation device work? Perhaps by scanning the position of every particle in an object, you might think. That information could be transferred somewhere else and a copy constructed of the original, exact down to the last electron."

Donn frowned. "But that couldn't work. The uncertainty principle you can't specify a particle's momentum and position precisely."

"Correct," she said approvingly. "In quantum mechanics, such quant.i.ties as position are derived from probabilistic wave functions mathematical descriptions that underlie all reality. But But the principle says nothing about transferring exact data about the wave functions themselves. That was the approach I was working on, before I died." the principle says nothing about transferring exact data about the wave functions themselves. That was the approach I was working on, before I died."

Rima asked, "What about Ghost technology?"

"My husband, in the course of his career dealing with the Ghosts, came across one example of a teleport-like device. It was all to do with breaking up electrons: dividing indivisible particles."

They looked at her blankly.

Eve said, "Look an electron's quantum wave function is spherical in its lowest energy state. But in its next highest energy state, the wave function has a dumbbell shape. Now, if that dumbbell could be stretched and pinched, could it be divided? If so, when the function collapses, it could be as if an electron leapt instantaneously from one bubble to another."

Rima was fighting her way through this fog of words. "Is that how the Ghosts took away my son?"

"No," Eve said regretfully. "I'm sorry. The sort of processes I've described would leave behind physical traces. Various exotic particles that your AI would record. We're investigating every case. I'm hopeful that when we do start to turn up physical traces of some kind "

Samm said suddenly, "What about supersymmetry?"

Rima shook her head. "What? "What?"

"Another corner of physics. Just an interest of mine. Have the Ghosts worked with that?"

"Not that we know of," said Eve.

Rima glared at her husband. "Don't waste time, you fool."

Donn felt he had to say, "Everybody keeps saying it's the Ghosts. We don't even know if it is is the Ghosts behind this." the Ghosts behind this."

Rima said bitterly, "Oh, of course it's the wretched Ghosts. Everybody knows it." She glanced upward at the Boss, the gleaming star that cast shadows even here inside the lifedome. "I grew up thinking the Ghosts were all right. But things have changed. They're up to something. Everybody knows that. They say there's a new sort of Ghost up there, deeper in the a.s.sociation. A Seer, who can see into past and future."

"Now, that's all rumor," Samm said. "Gossip. Trouble-making."

"No wonder they can take away our children, if that's that's true. Because if they can see into the future, they could sneak in here with one of those Silvermen of theirs." true. Because if they can see into the future, they could sneak in here with one of those Silvermen of theirs."

"Oh, Rima," Samm said, distressed.

Eve said uncertainly, "Getting back to teleportation "