The Fleet of Stars Read online

"All over—everywhere—What in death's name is this?"

  "Reaction to the Prefect's speech. What else? It touched off a few spinwits, and they detonated the rest."

  "Um, yeh. Monkey see, monkey do." Going through accounts of the early days, the days of Fireball and before, when the planets were opening up, Fenn had acquired some archaic phrases. "And a chance to smash things, loot, feel important and brave. Yeh. I don't suppose any sophotectic force has been sent anywhere?"

  "No, I'm sure not. That would fan the fire, without being much use." The captain smiled bleakly. "Why would the cybercosm need a police corps?'' The eyes of his image shifted; he was glancing at a new input. "Um, it will dispatch a couple of machines to fetch your counselor."

  "Shall I report back afterward?"

  "No, go on home. You've had a full daywatch and topped it off in megastyle. We seem to have things in hand, more or less. We will be scramblish busy, of course. Be prepared to work your guts out tomorrow. Now, anything else?"

  "Um-m—" Fenn remembered. "I tried for a shot of the junkgenes who was egging this mob on." He pressed the bezel of his ring into the microscanner and activated it. In the screen beside the captain's image appeared the blurry shape of a man urging two others along. The captain replayed, stopped the action, narrowed in, and magnified to get a partial profile. "Search," he directed.

  A second or two passed while particles, photons, and quantum states ransacked a global database.

  " 'Tentative identification: Pedro Dover,' " the captain read off. He didn't bother to recite the number, but continued in paraphrase, "If this is him—picture's not clear enough to be sure—he was in trouble in Bowen about three years ago, which is why we have a record of him. Moved to Luna two years earlier. Double name, you notice, though he's originally from Australia. I'd guess his membership in the Gizaki cult prompted him to that, maybe taking the extra name from an ancestor. It did, pretty obviously, lead him to make a vicious attack on a man who was going on at length about how stupid the cult is. The fight got stopped before any real harm was done, so Pedro Dover was let off with a month of evenwatch classes in self-control. Inquiry showed he's a fairly skilled low-level technician who earns driblets of currency to supplement his credit by doing odd jobs. That's all. Nothing since then."

  "I can look into it," Fenn suggested.

  "No. not worthwhile when we've so much else to do and aren't even sure it's the same mozo. Let's restore order, and the Gizaki types oughtn't to find many customers. Go home and rest, lieutenant. See you tomorrow." The captain sighed, because it would be long before he could sleep, and flicked off.

  Fenn went back to Benno, who had completed its communion with the cybercosm. The Prior had arrived and was talking unhappily with it. He was a short, gray-haired man of mostly Caucasoid descent, robed like his associates but with a stole of green lifemat draped over his stooped shoulders.

  "Good evenwatch, officer," he greeted, politely bowing. Fenn gave him a soft salute. “A hideous occurrence, this. And yet, as I was saying to Benno, I cannot but feel sorry for those poor souls. It isn't easy being sentient these days, least of all when one is caged in futility."

  "I know," the sophotect agreed. Damaged neurocir-cuits had self-repaired or compensated to some extent and it spoke steadily, the tone gentle, the language colloquial. "I've been down among them as well as active in your neighborhood."

  "They need you more than we do," the Prior said.

  "But I'm afraid I haven't accomplished much. In fact, no matter how hard I try, I seem to provoke frequent hostility."

  Because that's the sort of creatures they are, Fenn thought unsympathetically. Benno conies along offering advice, information, help, medical treatment, instruction for whoever would like to learn something, guidance and support for whoever's having difficulties; and when they find they can't worm any dirty little advantages out of it, they don't care to avail themselves of the services. It reminds them too much that they're parasites, not just on the cybercosm, but on normal human society.

  What hurt was that he could almost understand this. He recalled the local counselor in his boyhood, kindly old Irma. ("Old" was meaningless for a sophotect, but that was how he had thought of it.) Yes, it bailed him out of a couple of situations he'd gotten himself into, and once he confided a heartbreak to it, because somehow he could not tell his parents, and it gave him good words, good music, a measure of peace.

  And he'd met other sophotects as he became adult, in the woods, in space, in his schooling, and then in his work—wise, patient, incorruptible. But always he must fight the sense of being confined and stifled. Always it was hard to remember that there was nobody and nothing to blame, any more than there was to blame for the fact that every human must someday die, and so at last must every star. Meanwhile, the stories that were said to come from Centauri drifted ever thicker and more maddening.

  Aloud, he ventured, "Looks to me like you've come to stand in their minds"—what passes for their minds— "for the cybercosm. And they hate it worse than they hate us in the Orthosphere, because it's the most unmistakable cause and token of their own irrelevance."

  "You shouldn't generalize," Benno reproached him. "They aren't an organization or a species. Most among them peacefully live their humble, rather wistful lives, much of it in watching the multiceiver. A small percentage create the problem."

  "I suppose," Fenn conceded. "Uh, I have wondered. With respect, might your kind of counselor be getting obsolete for their sort? Mightn't a human do better?"

  "To provide equivalent services would require a synnoiont, and I'm afraid we can't spare any."

  "Besides," the Prior said, "a synnoiont would be under the same handicap. S/he"—he finger-signed the ambivalent pronoun, which had not entered the Spanyol he was speaking—"is equally closely associated with the cybercosm."

  "I realize that," Fenn replied. "But I was thinking of straightforward human agents. Maybe you could find one, your Sapience—somebody who can make deep use of the cybercosm and its resources, but isn't linked with it. That's what your movement is all about, no?"

  "Not really." The Prior shook his head as if it had grown heavy. "Soulquest is much misunderstood. It did begin as a search for God, insight, ultimate truth, through cybernetics. But in the course of lifetimes, more and more the dream appeared empty. Few of us pursue it any longer. We draw on the system mainly for information, analyses, overviews, and symbolic virtualities. I myself do not seek enlightenment, only .'.. reconciliation."

  "But you are involved in the outside world also." Fenn was mostly making talk; he saw that the prior wished for it.

  "We try to provide a refuge, a place, a meaningful role, for the unfortunate, the misfits—a community for those who have no other roots. I, for example, was a nonquota child."

  "Oh? I didn't know. But surely, your Sapience, you were adopted into a good family. There's never a dearth of people who're happy to take in a baby like that."

  "True," said the Prior. "However, it can happen that such a child grows up feeling a stigma. After all, at least one of his/her bioparents exceeded the allowance, violated the equilibrium, and was punished by sterilization; and he/she was removed from them. Because of his/her existence, the next lottery will hold one less chance for somebody to have a third offspring." He winced. "I found that here is where I belong. Not out in yonder world."

  "I see," Fenn said low.

  He knew he had paid insufficient attention to shadings of trouble and sorrow, all during his youth and his time at the academy and afterward. He'd simply thrust ahead. Police work had seemed like the best that was open to him: camaraderie, occasional fights or dangers or puzzles or other challenges, frequent excursions topside under the sky of space, and the knowledge that here was something that needed doing and none but humans could properly do it. Then gradually he came to wonder how suited for it he actually was.

  "I suppose we'll just have to grope on as best we can," he said.

  "Inevitably," Benno answered
in its quiet fashion. "We sophotects too. Human affairs are chaotic. Their outcomes are forever unforeseeable, uncontrollable."

  The outer door retracted. A big shape loomed across the passage outside. The machines had come to take this avatar back for restoration.

  Fenn mumbled farewell and left.

  The district had calmed. Already a maintainor had removed bloodstrains and debris. Vehicles slipped past, a few people went by afoot, establishments had reopened— an artists' salon, a live theater, a home cookery claiming to feature authentic ancient Thai food. Another phrase from his desultory delvings into the past floated up to conscious memory: We humans nowadays, we live by taking in each other's washing.

  Well, not exactly. We live off what the automated system produces for us. The necessities and a lot of the comforts, anyhow. Citizen's credit is just a way to let us choose for ourselves how much of what we want, and tell the system how to adjust its outputs. But there are still things that only humans can do or make for other humans, everything from police and pleasure services to unique pieces of handicraft—which a sophotect could make too, and probably better, but the sophotects refrain. And so some of us, those who have the talent and desire and luck, we get to earn some extra income, and we get to believing we matter.

  Still another old phrase: the triumphant discovery of the obvious.

  He was weary but wire-taut. What about this speech that had triggered all the uproar? It was announced beforehand, of course, but Fenn had been topside and preoccupied the whole daywatch, investigating a death that might have been murder. (It appeared to be accidental. No machinery operating under human orders was totally foolproof: folly has no limits. However, murder did occur now and then. ... Would it have been murder—moral, as opposed to legal—if the rioters had had time to finish demolishing Benno? They'd have blotted out a mind, an awareness. But was it any more distinct from the unity of the cybercosm than a wave is from an ocean? Whatever was special about it could have been recreated from the database, the same Benno, nothing missing except the memories of its experiences since the last time it had joined with the whole ... Which raised the question of downloads and everything else the Prefect's address had dealt with.)

  A sign ahead blinked advertisement of a pub with privacy booths. On impulse, Fenn walked in. The room beyond was voluptuously decorated. A couple of joyeuses gave him inviting smiles. The flawless symmetries of their beauty must be due to biosculp jobs. For a moment he was tempted. He'd broken up with his latest girl; her temper matched his. But no. Besides the expense, he wanted to be alone with a beer and a screen. Get the news out of the way before he went home.

  He didn't require a full-dress booth suitable for fun and games. A cubicle was plenty, and much cheaper. When the shell had closed him off and he'd taken a first mouthful of lager, he touched for playback.

  Ibrahim, Prefect of the Synesis, appeared. “My fellow humans, wheresoever you are in the universe—" He spoke in Sinese, but Fenn found a running Anglo translation easier to follow.

  "—certain allegations. For years these have mounted and multiplied. Incredible though they seemed, their claims were too important to ignore. A rush to judgment would have been irresponsible. A proper inquiry would clearly take a long time, and meanwhile, we should not raise false hopes or false fears. Therefore the Council decided to act, but to withhold information until the truth was in hand. This decision was unanimous, including the cybercosm's vote.

  "We will release the full account of that investigation. The story is lengthy, complex, and fascinating. Interstellar distances were involved. Transmission times were measured in years. Transit times for probes to go and verify were longer. The cooperation of Proserpina would have made an enormous difference, but I must tell you that when we requested it, the Selenarchs there were less than forthcoming. They refused admission to our agents. They supplied no more than fragments of their exchanges with the Lunarians of Alpha Centauri. Otherwise they let unsupported rumors continue to breed, neither confirming nor denying anything. Under the circumstances, as you can readily understand, we had to work separately from them. That increased the time we took, and increased public frustration and suspiciousness. I do not say the Selenarchs hoped for this. I do say it was regrettable.

  "But now at last—"

  Yes, he declared, the Lunarians at Centauri survived the destruction of Demeter. No real surprise. The wonderful news was that, yes, the Terrans had succeeded in evacuating their whole population, and new colonies flourished on three new worlds.

  “Why did we not learn this at once, while it happened? Why the four centuries of hiatus in communication with us? That is a question to which we do not yet have a clear answer. Perhaps we never will. There appears to have been some profound mutual misunderstanding. Proserpina says it has heard from Centauri that Earth broke the exchange, responding to no further messages until the colonists finally stopped trying. The last word sent to Centauri was that Earth had changed so radically that further communication was pointless and might cause trouble.

  “That is the story we hear from Proserpina. As nearly as we can discover, it is what the Centaurians themselves believe. Presumably the Terran colonists elsewhere do too. But"—the distinguished figure made a solemn pause—"it is not true. We have retrieved all records from that period and examined them over and over. What did Earth actually tell her distant children? It told them that society was indeed being revolutionized, as the cybercosm reached more and more of its potential. The last message suggested, only suggested, that communication would get correspondingly difficult in the future. It would demand patience and imaginative intelligence— especially on the part of the colonists, whose own basic order of things remained much the same as that of their ancestors.

  "After a brief and somewhat incoherent response, they ceased transmitting. It was they who broke off, who thereafter returned nothing but silence to Earth's repeated efforts at dialogue. In the end, the Federation concluded that they did not choose to hear more.

  “Why not? We can only conjecture. It may be—it may be—that the Lunarian lords at Centauri, and Anson Guthrie on Demeter, did not wish new ideas, new visions, coming in to make their people question their governance and plans. There are ample historical precedents for this."

  Fenn snorted and keyed for more beer. He wanted something he could swallow.

  No doubt the average person on Earth or Luna would have no difficulty with that notion. S/he had grown up regarding the Synesis as the great, benign provider. Why should it lie? Fenn had no answer to that himself. Yet, harking back to the age of the pioneers, he couldn't believe that Guthrie would ever have censored anything, certainly not in the service of any big social scheme. Well, granted, Ibrahim wasn't claiming that was the case, just that it might have been. But Fenn couldn't accept that the official agency for-interstellar communication had had the single transmitter and receiver. People in those days were diverse and scattered across the Solar System. Surely, here and there, small private groups, even individuals, had made their own attempts to get back in touch. It didn't take much wattage to send, especially if you were content with narrow bandwidth and verbal messages. Receiving something intelligible did call for a fair-sized dish and other equipment, but nothing that no amateurs whatsoever could afford. Why had nobody gotten through?

  Because the Centaurians really didn't choose to reply? Or because small robotic craft were secretly out in space, detecting and jamming? Transmitters wouldn't have been too many for that; their locations were presumably not secret. Nor need the interdict have been maintained very long before everybody got discouraged and quit.

  Proserpina, however—Proserpina was too far away, and Proserpinans spread too widely through yonder spaces, for any such monitoring. Could that be a reason why the Federation government had done everything it cbuld, first to abort their colony, then to keep it isolated and insignificant? As soon as they achieved energy self-sufficiency and began a real expansion, the Proserpinans could have set abou
t reestablishing contact with the other sun. They had taken awhile to get around to it, but once they did, evidently the response was immediate.

  Why should the top authorities of the Federation, and later the Councillors of the Synesis, have minded? You'd think they would rejoice to get word again—and would never have wanted an interruption in the first place. Fenn scowled. It seemed likeliest that the cybercosm had persuaded them.

  Why?

  Well, this speech today had in fact triggered a melt-down. Fenn listened more closely.

  "—with reservations, we can confirm that the Terrans of the star worlds have achieved a means of traversing the abysses between, and that this has given them unprecedented longevity—of a sort."

  You haven't got any choice by now but to confirm it, Fenn thought cynically. What with all the details that've come out, we'll soon have amateurs beamcasting again, and this time your jamming couldn't be explained away.

  If that was what happened, of course, he added somewhat reluctantly.

  "—those entities they call their Life Mothers—"

  Fenn heard it with swelling impatience. Piece by piece, he extracted from the oratory what he believed had meaning and put it together into a plain statement.

  Life transplanted to a world for which it had not evolved, which nature had not made ready for anything as complex as grass and birds, could by itself do no more than cling to its bridgehead. Outside artificial, insulated enclosures, it would not thrive, it might well not survive, unless the fragile nascent biome was constantly watched over, protected, nurtured, guided in its growth. Only a conscious mind could do that, linked to living things everywhere by a web of senses and communication as the brain is linked to the cells of the body. That mind must needs be greater than human—although on Demeter, the nucleus of it had been the downloads of two human beings. It would become one with its life, an immanence in nature, Demeter Mother; and because it was ultimately organic, it would gain a power denied by quantum law to inorganic cybernetics. It could give to a human body, grown from a human genome, the content of a download, so that the person who had been downloaded—perhaps when dying—lived again in flesh and blood.