Beyond the light horizon, p.29
Beyond the Light Horizon, page 29
part #3 of Lightspeed Series
‘You mean, by the Karray and the Families?’
Damiba shrugged. ‘The decision had to be immediate.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet it did.’ She suspected that Damiba, or someone else in the Karray, had been in contact with the Co-ord forces in the system − whether the AIs of the combat drones or this Co-ord troopship, which like the HMS Mordant could easily have been lurking in the outer system and in constant touch with the drones by FTL shuttle − for days. Maybe Selena had been in that loop, too.
It didn’t matter. The deed was done. The Co-ord was on the ground, in force. There was nothing she could do about it now. Nothing anyone could do, for that matter: there was no way to destroy the Vasilevsky or compel it to leave without doing far more damage to Saurienville than the situation could possibly warrant.
Unless the other species could do something.
She turned to Melikaar. ‘What do the Jenty think about all this?’
‘Speaking for myself only,’ Melikaar replied, ‘but expecting wider agreement if it were to be discussed, it seems to be a matter between the human groups, and not our concern. In any case, as your friend Selena here has pointed out, we can do nothing about it.’
‘And the saurians?’
Melikaar raised his hands heavenward. ‘That is a matter for them. For now, they are helping to guard the Alliance troops who arrived armed and by parachute, but they have expressed no opinion on the unarmed Co-ord soldiers coming into town.’
‘And do they have an opinion on the armaments inside that spacecraft squatting in your river, and the armaments displayed openly on its deck?’
‘As long as the weapons stay there and unused, I doubt they will see a problem. For now, nothing has been said or decided by the saurians.’
‘Oh, great!’ So much for that short cut, too. She turned to Ogundu, who had come off the phone and now stood observing proceedings with a pose and look of wry detachment. ‘Citizen Ogundu, what do you think?’
Ogundu strolled over. ‘What I think is not important. Having discussed the situation with the Station Commander, I can say in what we concur.’
‘Yes?’
‘Legally, the Co-ord has every right to be here. A visit, even one apparently’ − she shot a sharp glance at Damiba − ‘uninvited, but ostensibly consented to by the host government, is not a violation of the previous agreement between the powers about protecting native intelligent life − begging your pardon, Melikaar, but that is the terminology of the agreement.’
‘We are content to be described as native intelligent life,’ said Melikaar. If he was being ironic, there was no way for a human listener to tell from his tone, and the subtitles didn’t indicate any such subtlety.
‘But there was another agreement,’ Nayak said, ‘made not two hours ago! What about that?’
‘What about it, indeed?’ said Ogundu. ‘It was made under my mediation between the Families, the Karray and the Jenty. It hasn’t yet been considered, far less ratified, by the City Council. And, of course, the Co-ord and the Alliance had no part in it, other than as powers whose forces we had agreed to chase out − which the Jenty most satisfactorily did. And unfortunately neither they nor we are able to do anything physically to make the Vasilevsky leave, and likewise unfortunately we’re in the same position legally. They’ve rather stolen a march on us.’ She nodded to, or towards, Melikaar. ‘Besides, the matter is in calmer and wiser hands than ours.’ Melikaar nodded gravely back.
Ogundu turned to Damiba, Selena and Nayak, and brushed her palms smartly together. ‘Night has fallen. I understand the food here is excellent. Let’s find somewhere to eat before the Co-ord marines grab all the seats. Lakshmi, walk with me.’
Nayak agreed, with alacrity. Right now, she didn’t want to walk with Selena.
The street lights were on, and although they cast plenty of light downwards they cast so little upwards that the stars were visible despite the haze. Nayak wondered idly if the Station’s orbital observations underestimated the size and density of settlements. Ogundu walked briskly, heels clicking. Nayak had to hurry to keep up. Neon signs and savoury smells − they were in the right area. Laughter and music and the clack of dominoes and mahjong tiles came from doorways and outdoor tables. Ogundu’s confident, haughty gait and manner cleared a path on the busy sidewalk. The virtual dot in their view that was Iskander’s guide to the nearest good restaurant floated in front of them like a firefly. When they were at least four metres ahead of Selena and Damiba, Ogundu slackened the pace.
‘Lakshmi, there’s something on your mind.’
‘You could say that.’
‘I do say that,’ Ogundu retorted. ‘I’m not here for banter, and we don’t have much time before we reach the restaurant. I’ve noticed you several times deep in thought or bursting to say something. Out with it.’
Nayak couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder. Damiba and Selena were well behind, laughing together at something one of them had said. Thick as thieves, just as Damiba and Grant had been the previous week. In a low voice, she told Ogundu what she had deduced about Iskander and the Fermi.
‘I had wondered,’ said Ogundu.
‘Wondered what?’
‘Why the Fermi chose to communicate that way on Apis.’ She laughed. ‘Just one of those points one sets aside as curious, you know?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Nayak said, for the sake of politeness. The thought of setting aside an anomaly as curious would never occur to her. She couldn’t comprehend a mind to which it did. Maybe it was a lawyer thing. Filing systems, legal fictions, stuff like that.
‘I defer to you on questions of physics, so I won’t dispute your conclusion,’ Ogundu said, quickening her pace again. ‘Staggering though it is. Let me be blunt − is there any way we can turn this to our immediate advantage?’
‘Who’s “we”?’ Nayak asked.
‘You. Me. The cadre organisation. The Union.’
‘I’m . . . loyal to Katrina, and . . . grateful to the Union.’
‘Thanks for clearing that up! Well, Katrina and the Union would be grateful to you if you could come up with some way to apply this insight of yours to our present predicament.’
‘What predicament, exactly?’
This time it was Ogundu who glanced back, and around. She nodded almost imperceptibly, perhaps taking some reassurance from Iskander. ‘We thought what the Jenty did with their needles of bottled sunshine would secure Saurienville for the African Union, and keep the other powers out of direct contention. The Co-ord have called our bluff. And it’s quite possible that Damiba and the Karray are happy to have them here.’
‘But why? They’ve been Union for centuries.’
‘That’s exactly the problem. A set-up like the Union can’t last for centuries. If it does, it becomes something else, one way or another.’ Ogundu swept a hand downwards in front of her elegant gown. ‘Look at me! I’m dressed for the occasion, to be sure, to impress the ladies of the Families and show them that I regard myself as their equal. I’m a well-paid professional, even after tax and cadre membership dues.’ She waved a hand. ‘Iskander takes care of the details. But I still have a bigger and nicer house than most, and I can well afford to swank around in designer gear when I’m at work. I worked and studied hard for this and I bloody earn it. You couldn’t buy my work at a lower price − not that I see much of it myself! If I opened a practice in England − which I could, without even crossing the border, let alone defecting − I could keep a lot more of what I charge. Union law is quite a lucrative speciality down there. The organisation would chuck me out, of course, but that would save me even more money!’
‘So why don’t you?’
‘Because I believe in the economic democracy. We’re becoming a more equal society, not just in income but in skills, education, culture, and so on. There’s less and less division between mental and manual work. You saw that for yourself at the yard.’
Nayak admitted that she had.
‘Fine. So after another generation or two of democracy and electricity, as we say, shortening the working day and week and expanding opportunities, you have or are close to a society of the free and equal, a society without classes − and thank God, a society without a cadre organisation. One where every adult is a responsable.’
Nayak laughed. ‘Too many meetings.’
‘You wouldn’t even notice them as meetings, which would be another blessing. But enough about utopia. What happens when progress is a lot slower, and the cadre organisation is still around, after centuries? I think the Karray are a far more complacent and consolidated social layer than they think. Damiba was happy to have Grant’s company deliver phones and so forth, because it strengthens the Karray against the Families. But it also undermines the Karray, and hacks away at their inevitable entanglement in whatever bureaucratic barnacles have encrusted themselves around the planning system. If the Karray are anything like I suspect, then getting a bureaucratic market socialist power on the scene is just what they need to keep them in the style to which they’ve become all too accustomed. And on top of all that, we have the Alliance having quite possibly just poked the Fermi in the eye by nicking their dead asteroids. So that’s our predicament.’
‘That’s all . . . interesting,’ Nayak said, ‘but I don’t see how what I think I know about the Fermi can help with any of it.’
The virtual dot stopped outside a restaurant. They waited for Damiba and Selena, still deep in talk and gesticulation, to catch up.
‘You’re the genius, Lakshmi Nayak,’ said Ogundu. ‘You work it out.’
*
Sometime during dinner, or while they sat and drank the local analogue of rum afterwards, Nayak and Selena made up. It wasn’t clear to Nayak quite how it happened, but one moment they were being prickly and frosty, and the next they were laughing together, and that was that. Damiba and Ogundu went their separate ways, and Nayak and Selena walked back to the hotel where the people from the Station were staying. They collapsed in an exhausted cuddle and slept all night.
In the morning they went out and had breakfast at a table beside a street food stall. The day was chilly, so they wrapped up. They remarked how strange it was to see so many European and Central Asian and Chinese people around. The Co-ord marines strolled about in small groups, haggled at shops and stalls, traded cigarettes and chocolate bars and lighters and such for local money or directly for local commodities. Many of them were hungover from the previous night, and set their glasses to shade to hide bleary eyes. The Co-ord AI, WeThink, on their phones and glasses was fast catching up with Iskander in its ability to translate.
On the other side of town, a different influx was happening. The first shuttles and arks from Congo and Guinea and Algeria had arrived at the airstrip, and the traders and visitors made their way into Saurienville by the Jenty bus service or by smaller human-scale buses and taxis laid on by enterprising locals. Some dignitaries − AU officials and diplomats − arrived in electric vehicles that rolled out of the arks and into town to great acclaim and curiosity.
‘Take me to your leader,’ Selena said, as one such limousine swept by.
Nayak blinked. ‘What?’
‘It’s what aliens are supposed to say when they arrive,’ Selena explained.
Nayak chuckled. ‘I know that! Not so easy finding the leaders here. Like you said, they don’t exactly have portraits up everywhere.’
‘Not even dead leaders, like in Havana.’
‘I suppose we met the leaders last night,’ Nayak said. ‘I guess Louise Ogundu is setting up meetings with the ladies of the Families and the City Council and Jean-Paul Damiba is doing something behind the scenes to make sure the Karray stay in the loop.’
Selena flickered fingers in front of her glasses. ‘It turns out he isn’t − he’s back behind the counter of his shop.’
‘Taking care of business? Good for him.’
Nayak curled cold fingers around her still hot mug of not quite coffee. ‘“Take me to your leader”,’ she repeated. Selena raised her eyebrows. Nayak waved a finger to stymie any query or quip. The sentence was bothering her, as if it had reminded her of a dream fragment. The ladies, the leaders, the first thing an alien asks . . .
‘Aha!’ she cried. ‘That’s it!’
‘What is?’
‘We contact the Fermi ourselves, directly. They’ll know it’s us because we’ll call from orbit around the nearest gas giant. Right above their heads!’
‘How do we know they’ll answer?’
‘We don’t. But there’s a good chance they’ll answer if we contact them by a means they’ve used before: the old phones.’
Selena looked dubious. ‘Do you think the Families will lend us one? The ladies yesterday treated theirs like sceptres.’
‘Melikaar didn’t say only the Families had phones. He said the Families were the ones who’d been able to take advantage of the messages that arrived on the phones. I bet the Karray have some. Maybe even ordinary people.’
‘I think ordinary people would be even less likely to let these precious heirlooms out of their hands!’
Nayak nodded. ‘You’re right. I’ll call Damiba.’
Damiba was understandably sceptical, but he made the calls. Later that day, Nayak and Selena arrived at the shop, which was even busier than before. Damiba had his new glasses on, and his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, as if he wasn’t yet ready to trust the new ones as corrective lenses.
He looked up. ‘Hi,’ he said, then gestured apology to his colleagues. ‘Excusez-moi.’
He lifted the counter flap, beckoned them through to the back. The door closed behind them, he handed Nayak a tooled leather pouch with a neck strap. Inside it was the device. She turned it over in her hands, afraid to drop it. All her reflexes were wrong. The thing was heavier than any phone she’d handled, almost 0.2 kg, and its surfaces slick. A museum piece: black glass front and black hard-shell plastic back, with a cluster of lenses near the top, and indented switches around the rim. It had a patina, and traces of wear. The model was thirty years out of date and the object itself was three hundred years old.
‘It’s fully charged,’ Damiba said. ‘You can find information on it, but it doesn’t connect to any networks, of course.’
‘I can make an attempt, but, like I said, it’s a hardware problem,’ said Iskander.
‘Iskander! I forbid any attempt.’
‘Very well.’
Damiba reached out. ‘If I may?’ He took the phone and thumbed an indentation in the side. The screen came alive, with a pictorial background − a family smiling on a veranda − and lots of little icons. At the top no signal appeared in tiny print. Damiba tapped and flicked Nayak through a quick tour of the unfamiliar interface, finishing with the messages from the Fermi. These began with Attendez and then, eleven years later Travaillez sur les navires. This instruction to work on the ships was followed by others, fifty or so over three centuries, even more oblique to Nayak.
‘They made sense in their time and context,’ Damiba said. He handed the phone back. ‘Take care of it, and bring it back.’
Nayak slipped it in the pouch and hung the pouch around her neck, under her shirt and jacket. She thought of the screen background picture, probably taken by or for an ancestor of the present owner, a glimpse of lives and a life long lost, a lost moment of peace before the disasters then looming had swept over the original owner and carried him or her farther away than anyone could have then imagined. She felt like a heroine in a fantasy game, having been charged with the care of an ancient, puissant relic with which she was going to talk to a god.
‘I will,’ she said. She turned to Selena. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Let’s go.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gas Giant Gods
Terre Nouveau orbit, Saturday 4 April and Planet IV orbit, Sunday 5 April 2071
When Nayak had finished explaining, Katrina Ulrich looked at the black phone on the table for what felt like a long time, as if it was a crystal ball in which she sought a portent. She looked up, shook her head and sighed.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think this will work. You can try, but . . .’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘These things lie, Lakshmi. You’ve read Emma Hazeldene’s papers from Apis. They told that exile guy, uh, Able Jenkins, that they were ancient machine intelligences from Venus! They told you that they were spontaneously generated intellects from the moment of the initial singularity! Yes, yes, I know they told you this in a dream! And now you think they’re, what? Far-future descendants of Iskander that have travelled back in time to billions of years ago? And have somehow retained’ − she jabbed a finger at the device − ‘this thing’s obsolete operating system?’
‘Pretty much, yes,’ Nayak said.
‘You know what I think? The Fermi is or are a four-dimensional structure, all right, that crosses over into our universe or spacetime or whatever you want to call it, and, yes, it’s some kind of AI, but it’s got nothing to do with any purpose we can understand. For all we know, it could be a superluminal transport system from . . . another spacetime, but what we interact with is the equivalent of the departure board or the screens showing soothing views in the passenger lounge. When we ask it to explain what it’s up to it simply tells us whatever it thinks might fly with whoever it’s telling its story to.’
Nayak listened politely. She was confident. She had the mathematics in her head.
‘It’s still worth a try,’ she said. ‘I mean, it can’t hurt. Just a quick shuttle to the innermost of the gas giants. It’s straightforward to pick a safe orbit. We have all the gas giant moons mapped.’
Ulrich stared. ‘We don’t have all the orbiting rubble mapped – and, besides, the risks aren’t just from that! The Fermi could reach out even when they were in rocks. What they can do now is unknown.’
‘I want to find out, and I doubt they will respond in a hostile manner. They didn’t do anything to the Alliance flagship, and other spacecraft that came close.’
