Semper Human (22 page)

He looked around, waiting for some manifestation, some presence of the aliens. The world, Garroway knew, was illusory, created inside his head as a virtual meeting place, and how closely it matched reality was anyone's guess. He wasn't at all certain of what to expect. The name humans had given
to the species, the Tarantulae, called forth images of large, hairy spiders, and it was distinctly possible that the Protocol in effect would create images based on his expectations.

He hoped that wouldn't be the case. He didn't like spiders.

You are different from the others.

The words sounded in his mind, uninflected, in precise Anglic.

“What others would those be?”

You are different from the ones that called themselves Empire of Dahl.

“I hope so. I represent an association of many intelligent species. We seek peaceful contact and mutual understanding…not conquest.”

“As do we.” The words this time were audible, as though spoken just behind Garroway's head. He jumped and turned, but saw nothing but more beach, masses of purple vegetation that might have been the edge of a jungle and, in the far distance, white, softly sculpted towers that appeared to be buildings or other large structures rising from the forest.

Oddly, the structures weren't static, but appeared to be in constant motion, as if they were growing, unfolding, and changing geometries from moment to moment. The changes weren't fast, but they created the illusion that the structures were alive…or that he was viewing the nanoconstruction of a city through a camera that sped up the motion a thousand-fold.

The air around him took on a kind of graininess…and then clouds of gold-gleaming dust motes were wafting together in front of him, seeming to emerge from ground and sky and water and light and the very air itself. The motes coalesced into a pillar, then further refined themselves, taking on more detail, more solidity.

The being had the appearance of a young man—or possibly a young woman. It was hard to tell which, since the features were androgynous and its body was more or less hidden by a thin film of radiance, like the coronae affected by upper-or
ruling-class humans. There was a hint of unreality about the being, as though it were somehow still insubstantial; the most powerfully real part of it were the eyes, which were deep, gray-green, and somehow ancient, revealing an apparent age wildly out of keeping with the figure's youthful appearance.

“Are you creating that image, Lofty?” Garroway asked. “Or is that what it really looks like?”

“They are generating the image,”
Lofty replied.
“It seems unlikely that this is their actual appearance, however.”

Garroway had to agree. The chances for an alien species to look exactly like a human—even one as ethereal-seeming as this one—were too remote to be even considered as a possibility.

So the Tarantulae had anticipated the Deep Alien Protocol, and possibly gone it one better. They were presenting themselves as something that looked human, no doubt to avoid possible racial bias against the appearance of the
truly
alien. That seemed reasonable. The Dahlists reportedly had attacked the Tarantulae, and they might want to smooth over any potential rough spots in their communications with the Associative.

He wondered, though, what the Tarantulae really looked like. In the back of his mind he was still thinking of giant spiders.

“You would not understand our true form,” the being said. “In fact, the term itself is misleading. We
have
no form, as such.”

“A digital intelligence?” For a moment, he wondered if he might be speaking with the Xul…or with an alien analogue of
Homo telae
.

“Suffice it to say,” the glowing being replied, “that we represent a highly distributed intelligence.”

The alien's choice of words suggested a computer network…or possibly a CAS, a Complex Adaptive System.

“Essentially, yes,” the being said, and Garroway realized with a start that it was reading his mind. How? Human cerebral implants allowed a kind of electronic telepathy, but you
couldn't just go snooping around in another person's thoughts. “Rather than organic cells, like you, we utilize a nanotechnic base.”

“A true nanotechnic life form,”
Lofty whispered in Garroway's head.
“An intelligence distributed among hundreds of trillions of molecule-sized devices that can combine or recombine in nearly infinite configurations. They appear to occupy the entirety of both the organic and nonorganic infrastructures of their worlds, and may reside within stars and in open space as well, with a direct link to the Quantum Sea. They may be technically immortal.”

Immortal
….

How long had Humankind been chasing that particular dream? Human biological and cybernetic technologies had increased the lifespan of
Homo sapiens
to a thousand years, at least potentially, and it was unclear how long individuals of
Homo telae
or
Homo superioris
might live. There were practical considerations that seemed to place a limit on the survival of hardware in the case of electronic systems, and wetware for organics.

“So…how did the Dahlists get the jump on you, anyway?” Garroway asked. It was a serious question. A technology this advanced—one able to take on any form at will, with the ability to live forever, with the capacity to draw whatever it needed from the fabric of space itself—didn't just mean an ability to change shape. An entire civilization built on such technologies would have capabilities that would be nothing short of magic.

“We're not sure we know what you mean by ‘get the jump on,'” the being said. “You appear to believe that they attacked us.”

“Didn't they? That was the report we had.”

“They occupied several worlds within our sphere, but, for the most part, we ignored them. They did not seem to be interested in communication.”

Garroway's mental imagery of spiders had faded away. In
stead, now, he was thinking of ants, of humans
as
ants in the presence of a human.

If the human's bare foot twitched as the ant ran across it, could the ant be said to be engaged in communication with the human? Could the ant understand whatever the human might have to say in reply?

And on a far deeper level, could the human honestly care what the ant had to say? It occurred to Garroway that the being he was facing in this virtual world might be to him roughly as a man was to an insect. The entity
appeared
to be speaking with him…but he had the feeling that only a tiny fraction of its mind was actually engaged in that task.

Beings as powerful as the Tarantulae might well not even notice the activities of mere humans.

“It's not that we can't notice,” the Tarantulae told him. “We are quite aware now of you and your fleet…as we were aware of the Emperor Dahl and his activities. There is simply little point in such contact. The levels and scopes of our respective technologies are, as you have surmised, vastly different.”

As if to illustrate the point, the distant forest, the eerily malleable buildings, the black sand and ocean all faded from view. Garroway seemed now to be standing in empty space. The soft glow of the Tarantula Nebula extended in all directions, aswarm with stars like myriad, radiant jewels.

Nebula and stars appeared as a resplendent backdrop for…structures, geometrical shapes—spheres and spheroids, pyramids and cubes and other shapes less easily defined—that seemed to come and go, popping in and out of existence with no pattern that Garroway could detect. Lines and beams of light appeared to connect many of the structures, shifting and changing as the shapes came and went. There was no way to judge scale. The smallest of those structures might be a hundred meters across and relatively close…or millions of kilometers distant and as massive as a planet.

Some of those shapes hurt his eyes when he tried to follow
their lines and angles and eldritch curves. He was not, he realized, experiencing a conventional three-dimensional geometry.

“We came out here to rescue you, you know,” Garroway pointed out. “Apparently, though, you didn't need rescuing.”

“The gesture is appreciated,” the being said, with something that might have been a human shrug. “And…it is still possible that your species could help us.”

“How?”

Ants didn't
help
. They were ignored…or they were exterminated.

“I'm not sure an explanation would help,” the being told him. “There are concepts here literally beyond your ken. I regret the fact that this must seem condescending…but there's no easy way to express it.”

The geometric shapes had faded away by now, but the beams of light remained, anchored, somehow, in empty space, as though defining a far larger structure that did not exist, exactly, in three-dimensional space-time, at least as Garroway understood it.

“Try me,” Garroway said.

“To do so might cause you injury, General Garroway,” the being told him. “There are limits to what your interfaces can handle in terms of data flow…and limits to what even your artificially enhanced organic components can assimilate. And, to be blunt, there is also a threat to us in a free exchange of information between our species and yours.”

Garroway wondered if the graphic display he was seeing was, in fact, being created wholly for his consumption, an attempt to overawe him with seemingly godlike powers.

But…why? What would be the point?

“How in heaven's name could we possibly cause you harm?” Garroway asked.

“The problem is…complex. And farther ranging than your species can realize.”

Garroway realized he was going to get nothing useful out of the being. Except for the constantly changing backdrop,
the conversation appeared natural enough, even casual enough from his perspective, but he had the feeling that the composite being in front of him was way ahead of him in sheer mental scope and power.

Not even s-Humans, he thought, could come close to the literally godlike technological or mental capabilities of the Tarantulae.

“I see you perceive a part of the problem,” the being said.

“I can accept the idea that you people are far in advance of us. That we might not have anything you want, in terms of trade or information exchange. I can also imagine that you might not want to interfere with the paths of more primitive species.”

“Again, that is part of the problem. A
small
part. And, in fact, we do need to pass certain data to you. The problem is whether you will be able to comprehend fully what we are saying.”

The background now was a brilliant white radiance. Garroway suspected that the vantage point was actually within the core of a star. Even against that brilliant light, he could make out some sort of structure, though whether it was material or somehow conjured out of pure energy he couldn't tell. One of those shafts of light appeared to originate here, though, as though it emerged from some other, very different space deep within the heart of a star.

Then that background was gone, and Garroway floated with the alien in intergalactic space. Galaxies gleamed everywhere—perfect spirals; vast, elliptical aggregates of age-reddened suns; the smears and pinpoints of irregular galaxies.

“We enjoy a…partnership,” Garroway said, picking his words carefully, “with our AIs. Some of them are far faster and more intelligent than humans, and they have immediate access to incredible stores of information. Might you be able to work with them, rather than with organic humans?”

“The conversation you and I are having now would not be
possible without them,” the being said. “Agreed. As we speak, I am also holding an in-depth dialogue with the AI you call Socrates, and with numerous others.”

The star was gone, replaced by the whirlpool blue glow of an accretion disk whipping about the empty eye of a large black hole.

“Then tell
them
what you need us to know.”

“You trust them?”

Garroway considered this. “I may trust some of the Associative's AIs more than I trust some humans,” he said. “They're honest, and they don't appear to have their own personal agendas.”

He realized now that the fast-shifting backdrops he was witnessing weren't an attempt to awe him, but somehow reflected the changing vantage points of the Tarantulae in front of him. A widely dispersed intelligence indeed; it appeared to embrace whole galaxies, infinite reaches of space, and even other types of space entirely.

He wondered what such a species could possibly want with Humankind.

“Your people appear to have trouble trusting others,” the being said. “Especially now.”

“Yes, well, we have a long history of that, as I'm sure you're well aware.” The being must be drawing heavily on human records, histories, and data stores in general.
How
it was doing so Garroway couldn't even guess, but he was beginning to suspect that the Tarantulae weren't so much matter or energy as they were pure information.

“We are aware.”

“Wait a sec. You said ‘especially now.' What did you mean by that?” Realization sparked, then caught hold. “Are you talking about the Xul?”

“The entity you know as the Xul represent a special and distinct threat, not only to you, but to the universe as you know it, to all of what you think of as reality. Are you aware that they have begun rewriting your reality?”

“I've seen reports.” He remembered his Temporal Liaison
Officer…what was her name? Schilling. She'd been talking about a theory, something about the Xul contaminating humans through black holes and star gates. And Star Lord Rame had been convinced of the theory's reality as well. At the time, it all had seemed rather far-fetched. “Emomemes, you mean?”