Relativity Page 10

  “Tamiko who?” asked Ling.

  “Sorry. After your time. She was the first person to disembark at Alpha Centauri.”

  “The first,” I repeated; I guess I wasn’t doing a good job of hiding my bitterness. “That’s the honor—that’s the achievement. Being the first. Nobody remembers the name of the second person on the moon.”

  “Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.,” said Bokket. “Known as ‘Buzz.’”

  “Fine, okay,” I said. “You remember, but most people don’t.”

  “I didn’t remember it; I accessed it.” He tapped his temple. “Direct link to the planetary web; everybody has one.”

  Ling exhaled; the gulf was vast. “Regardless,” she said, “we are not pioneers; we’re just also-rans. We may have set out before you did, but you got here before us.”

  “Well, my ancestors did,” said Bokket. “I’m sixth-generation Sororian.”

  “Sixth generation?” I said. “How long has the colony been here?”

  “We’re not a colony anymore; we’re an independent world. But the ship that got here first left Earth in 2107. Of course, my ancestors didn’t immigrate until much later.”

  “Twenty-one-oh-seven,” I repeated. That was only fifty-six years after the launch of the Pioneer Spirit. I’d been thirty-one when our ship had started its journey; if I’d stayed behind, I might very well have lived to see the real pioneers depart. What had we been thinking, leaving Earth? Had we been running, escaping, getting out, fleeing before the bombs fell? Were we pioneers, or cowards?

  No. No, those were crazy thoughts. We’d left for the same reason that Homo sapiens sapiens had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar. It was what we did as a species. It was why we’d triumphed, and the Neandertals had failed. We needed to see what was on the other side, what was over the next hill, what was orbiting other stars. It was what had given us dominion over the home planet; it was what was going to make us kings of infinite space.

  I turned to Ling. “We can’t stay here,” I said.

  She seemed to mull this over for a bit, then nodded. She looked at Bokket. “We don’t want parades,” she said. “We don’t want statues.” She lifted her eyebrows, as if acknowledging the magnitude of what she was asking for. “We want a new ship, a faster ship.” She looked at me, and I bobbed my head in agreement. She pointed out the window. “A streamlined ship.”

  “What would you do with it?” asked Bokket. “Where would you go?”

  She glanced at me, then looked back at Bokket. “Andromeda.”

  “Andromeda? You mean the Andromeda galaxy? But that’s—” a fractional pause, no doubt while his web link provided the data “—2.2 million light-years away.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But…but it would take over two million years to get there.”

  “Only from Earth’s—excuse me, from Soror’s—point of view,” said Ling. “We could do it in less subjective time than we’ve already been traveling, and, of course, we’d spend all that time in cryogenic freeze.”

  “None of our ships have cryogenic chambers,” Bokket said. “There’s no need for them.”

  “We could transfer the chambers from the Pioneer Spirit.”

  Bokket shook his head. “It would be a one-way trip; you’d never come back.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Unlike most galaxies, Andromeda is actually moving toward the Milky Way, not away from it. Eventually, the two galaxies will merge, bringing us home.”

  “That’s billions of years in the future.”

  “Thinking small hasn’t done us any good so far,” said Ling.

  Bokket frowned. “I said before that we can afford to support you and your shipmates here on Soror, and that’s true. But starships are expensive. We can’t just give you one.”

  “It’s got to be cheaper than supporting all of us.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You said you honored us. You said you stand on our shoulders. If that’s true, then repay the favor. Give us an opportunity to stand on your shoulders. Let us have a new ship.”

  Bokket sighed; it was clear he felt we really didn’t understand how difficult Ling’s request would be to fulfill. “I’ll do what I can,” he said.

  Ling and I spent that evening talking, while blue-and-green Soror spun majestically beneath us. It was our job to jointly make the right decision, not just for ourselves but for the four dozen other members of the Pioneer Spirit’s complement that had entrusted their fate to us. Would they have wanted to be revived here?

  No. No, of course not. They’d left Earth to found a colony; there was no reason to think they would have changed their minds, whatever they might be dreaming. Nobody had an emotional attachment to the idea of Tau Ceti; it just had seemed a logical target star.

  “We could ask for passage back to Earth,” I said.

  “You don’t want that,” said Ling. “And neither, I’m sure, would any of the others.”

  “No, you’re right,” I said. “They’d want us to go on.”

  Ling nodded. “I think so.”

  “Andromeda?” I said, smiling. “Where did that come from?”

  She shrugged. “First thing that popped into my head.”

  “Andromeda,” I repeated, tasting the word some more. I remembered how thrilled I was, at sixteen, out in the California desert, to see that little oval smudge below Cassiopeia for the first time. Another galaxy, another island universe—and half again as big as our own. “Why not?” I fell silent but, after a while, said, “Bokket seems to like you.”

  Ling smiled. “I like him.”

  “Go for it,” I said.

  “What?” She sounded surprised.

  “Go for it, if you like him. I may have to be alone until Helena is revived at our final destination, but you don’t have to be. Even if they do give us a new ship, it’ll surely be a few weeks before they can transfer the cryochambers.”

  Ling rolled her eyes. “Men,” she said, but I knew the idea appealed to her.

  Bokket was right: the Sororian media seemed quite enamored with Ling and me, and not just because of our exotic appearance—my white skin and blue eyes; her dark skin and epicanthic folds; our two strange accents, both so different from the way people of the thirty-third century spoke. They also seemed to be fascinated by, well, by the pioneer spirit.

  When the quarantine was over, we did go down to the planet. The temperature was perhaps a little cooler than I’d have liked, and the air a bit moister—but humans adapt, of course. The architecture in Soror’s capital city of Pax was surprisingly ornate, with lots of domed roofs and intricate carvings. The term “capital city” was an anachronism, though; government was completely decentralized, with all major decisions done by plebiscite—including the decision about whether or not to give us another ship.

  Bokket, Ling, and I were in the central square of Pax, along with Kari Deetal, Soror’s president, waiting for the results of the vote to be announced. Media representatives from all over the Tau Ceti system were present, as well as one from Earth, whose stories were always read 11.9 years after he filed them. Also on hand were perhaps a thousand spectators.

  “My friends,” said Deetal, to the crowd, spreading her arms, “you have all voted, and now let us share in the results.” She tipped her head slightly, and a moment later people in the crowd started clapping and cheering.

  Ling and I turned to Bokket, who was beaming. “What is it?” said Ling. “What decision did they make?”

  Bokket looked surprised. “Oh, sorry. I forgot you don’t have web implants. You’re going to get your ship.”

  Ling closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. My heart was pounding.

  President Deetal gestured toward us. “Dr. MacGregor, Dr. Woo—would you say a few words?”

  We glanced at each other then stood up. “Thank you,” I said looking out at everyone.

  Ling nodded in agreement. “Thank you very much.”

  A reporter called out a question. “W
hat are you going to call your new ship?”

  Ling frowned; I pursed my lips. And then I said, “What else? The Pioneer Spirit II.”

  The crowd erupted again.

  Finally, the fateful day came. Our official boarding of our new starship—the one that would be covered by all the media—wouldn’t happen for another four hours, but Ling and I were nonetheless heading toward the airlock that joined the ship to the station’s outer rim. She wanted to look things over once more, and I wanted to spend a little time just sitting next to Helena’s cryochamber, communing with her.

  And, as we walked, Bokket came running along the curving floor toward us.

  “Ling,” he said, catching his breath. “Toby.”

  I nodded a greeting. Ling looked slightly uncomfortable; she and Bokket had grown close during the last few weeks, but they’d also had their time alone last night to say their goodbyes. I don’t think she’d expected to see him again before we left.

  “I’m sorry to bother you two,” he said. “I know you’re both busy, but…” He seemed quite nervous.

  “Yes?” I said.

  He looked at me, then at Ling. “Do you have room for another passenger?”

  Ling smiled. “We don’t have passengers. We’re colonists.”

  “Sorry,” said Bokket, smiling back at her. “Do you have room for another colonist?”

  “Well, there are four spare cryochambers, but…” She looked at me.

  “Why not?” I said, shrugging.

  “It’s going to be hard work, you know,” said Ling, turning back to Bokket. “Wherever we end up, it’s going to be rough.”

  Bokket nodded. “I know. And I want to be part of it.”

  Ling knew she didn’t have to be coy around me. “That would be wonderful,” she said. “But—but why?”

  Bokket reached out tentatively, and found Ling’s hand. He squeezed it gently, and she squeezed back. “You’re one reason,” he said.

  “Got a thing for older women, eh?” said Ling. I smiled at that.

  Bokket laughed. “I guess.”

  “You said I was one reason,” said Ling.

  He nodded. “The other reason is—well, it’s this: I don’t want to stand on the shoulders of giants.” He paused, then lifted his own shoulders a little, as if acknowledging that he was giving voice to the sort of thought rarely spoken aloud. “I want to be a giant.”

  They continued to hold hands as we walked down the space station’s long corridor, heading toward the sleek and graceful ship that would take us to our new home.

  Ineluctable

  In November 2000, I was Guest of Honor at Contact 4 Japan, a conference devoted to potential first contact with extraterrestrial life. For that conference, I was asked to devise a role-playing scenario involving the receipt of a series of alien radio messages; teams would try to decode the messages and provide appropriate responses. The conference was one of the most enjoyable events I’ve ever attended, and it also afforded me an opportunity to meet the staff of Hayakawa, my Japanese publisher.

  After the conference, I decided to expand my first-contact scenario into a full-fledged SF story, and sent it off to Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog. Now, by this point, I’d had 300,000 words of fiction in Analog, but it had all been in the form of novel serializations: The Terminal Experiment (which Analog ran under my original title, Hobson’s Choice), Starplex, and Hominids. When Stan bought this story—at 8,800 words, technically a novelette—it became my first short-fiction sale to Analog.

  What to do? What to do?

  Darren Hamasaki blew out air, trying to calm down, but his heart kept pounding, a metronome on amphetamines.

  This was big. This was huge.

  There had to be procedures in place. Surely someone had thought this through, had come up with a—a protocol, that was the word.

  Darren left the observatory shed in his backyard and trudged through the snow. He stepped up onto the wooden deck and entered his house through the sliding-glass rear doors. He hit the light switch, the halogen glow from the torchiere by the desk stinging his dark-adapted eyes.

  Darren took off his boots, gloves, tuque, and parka, then crossed the room, sitting down at his computer. He clicked on the Netscape Navigator icon. Oh, he had Microsoft Explorer, too—it had come preinstalled on his Pentium IV—but Darren always favored the underdog. His current search engine of choice, which changed as frequently as the current favorite CD in his stereo, was also an underdog: HotBot. He logged on to it and stared at the dialog box, trying to think of what keywords to type.

  Protocol was indeed appropriate, but as for the rest—

  He shrugged a little, conceding the magnitude of what he was about to enter. And then he pecked out three more words: contact, extraterrestrial, and intelligence.

  He’d expected to have to go spelunking, and, indeed, there were over thirteen hundred hits, but the very first one turned out to be what he was looking for: “Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” a document on the SETI League web site. Darren scanned it, his eyes skittering across the screen like a puck across ice. As he did so, he rolled his index finger back and forth on his mouse’s knurled wheel.

  “We, the institutions and individuals participating in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence…”

  Darren frowned. No one had sought his opinion, but, then again, he hadn’t actually been looking for aliens.

  “…inspired by the profound significance for mankind of detecting evidence…”

  Seemed to Darren that “mankind” was probably a sexist term; just how old was this document?

  “The discoverer should seek to verify that the most plausible explanation is the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence rather than some other natural or anthropogenic phenomenon…”

  Well, there was no doubt about it. No natural phenomenon was likely to generate the squares of one, two, three, and four over and over again, and the source was in the direction of Groombridge 1618, a star 15.9 light-years from Earth; Groombridge 1618 was in Ursa Major, nowhere near the plane of the ecliptic into which almost every Earth-made space probe and vessel had been launched. It had to be extraterrestrial.

  “…should inform the Secretary General of the United Nations in accordance with Article XI of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space…”

  Darren’s eyebrows went up. Somehow he doubted that the switchboard at the UN would put his call through to the secretary-general—was it still Kofi Annan?—if he said he was ringing him up to advise him that contact had been made with aliens. Besides, it was 2:00 a.m. here in Ontario, and UN headquarters were in New York; the same time zone. Surely the secretary-general would be at home asleep right now anyway.

  “The discoverer should inform observers throughout the world through the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the International Astronomical Union…”

  Good God, is it still possible to send a telegram? Is Western Union even still in business? Surely the submission could be made by E-mail…

  HotBot quickly yielded the URL for the bureau, which still used the word “telegrams” in its name, but one could indeed fill out an online form on their home page to send a report. Too bad, in a way: Darren had been enjoying composing a telegram in his head, something he’d never done before: “Major news stop alien signal received from Groombridge 1618 stop…”

  The brief instructions accompanying the form only talked about reporting comets, novae, supernovae, and outbursts of unusual variable stars (and there were warnings not to bother the bureau with trivial matters, such as the sighting of meteors or the discovery of new asteroids). Nary a word about submitting news of the receipt of an alien signal.

  Regardless, Darren composed a brief message and sent it. Then he clicked his browser’s back button several times to return to the Declaration of Principles, and skimmed it some more. Ah, now that was
more like it: “The discoverer should have the privilege of making the first public announcement…”

  Very well, then. Very well.

  There was nothing to do now but wait and see if the beings living on the third planet were going to reply. Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed expected they indeed would, but it would take time: time for the laser flashes to reach their destination, and an equal time for any response the inhabitants of that watery globe might wish to send—plus, of course, whatever time they took deciding whether to answer.

  There were many things Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed could do to while away the time: read, watch a video, inhale a landscape. And, well, had it been any other time, he probably would have contented himself with one of those. The landscape was particularly appealing: he had a full molecular map of the air in early spring from his world’s eastern continent, a heady blending of yellowshoot blossoms, clumpweed pollens, pondskins, sky-leaper pheromones, and the tang of ozone from the vernal storms. Nothing relaxed him more.

  He’d been afraid at first to access that molecular map, afraid the homesickness would be too much. After all, their ship, the Ineluctable, had been traveling for many years now, visiting seven other star systems before coming here. And there were still three more stars—and several years of travel—after this stop before Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed would really get to inhale the joyous scents of his homeland again. Fortunately, though, it had turned out that he could enjoy the simulation without his tail twitching too much in sadness.

  Still, this was not any other time; this was the period when, had they been back home, all three moons would have risen simultaneously, the harmonics of their vastly different orbital radii briefly synchronizing their movements. This was the time when the tides would be at their highest, when the jewelbugs would be taking to the air—and when the females of Palm-Up-Middle-Fingers-Splayed’s kind would be in estrus.

  Even aboard ship, the estrus cycle continued, never losing track of its schedule. Yes, despite his race’s hopes, even shielding females from the light and gravitational effects of the moons did nothing to end the recurring march. The cycle was so ingrained in