Authors: Gregory Benford
We detect no further missiles. Perhaps this deception of yours has worked. The radiant cloud is emitting signature frequencies
typical of heated organic compounds
.
“No surprise,” Killeen said. “That’s what it is.”
However, the pursuing vessel will interpret such emissions as evidence of a ruptured hull. A clever ruse
.
“Think they’ll break off followin’ us?”
It seems so
.
“You sure these are the last enemy Cybers?”
We have been assured by the Tukar’ramin. Our victory is now complete. The rightful Illuminates now prevail
.
“Damn glad to hear it.” Killeen was still rankled to think that his Family had gone through so much because of a factional
dispute among distant beings he would never know.
He let the spike of irritation pass. It was irrational to harbor resentments against beings whose motivations and meanings
were so alien. He thought he caught glimpses of Quath, but he was sure the deeper essence eluded him. Who could have guessed,
for example, that the Legacies aboard
Argo
would mean something to a Cyber—when simple spoken sentences often did not? The Illuminates had commanded that they be ferried
up from New Bishop and returned to
Argo
. That had been done just as
Argo
cast off from the station. Cyber craft had tried to destroy the Flitter carrying the Legacies and the Illuminates had expended
ship after ship defending it.
Why?
Killeen shook his head.
Standing beneath the roiling sky of incandescent majesty soothed his spirits. He walked the hull as their radiant wake dispersed.
A few more moments out here would settle him and make the coming tasks of Cap’ncy easier.
Raucous laughter streamed through the comm. Let them celebrate. The Family needed some release. And they would still have
to watch the pursuing craft carefully.
He allowed himself a grin. Maybe, just maybe, they were going to escape.
To what? He looked ahead at the yawning bluehot majesty of the disk that surrounded the Eater. It was a long voyage away.
They would have to prepare for whatever lurked there.
The Family… So much had changed since Fanny had led a scrap of Bishops away from Abraham’s wrecked Citadel, into Snowglade’s
bleakness. That remnant had joined with dregs of Knights and Rooks. They had slipped free of their world and had seen it as
a speck in an ocean of night.
Now, here, the Family had been seared again… only to
cleave anew with new members who brought their own scarred heritage. A new whole. A greater sum, perhaps.
He turned and walked back along the hull, boots thumping down on magnetic anchors. The slowly expanding cloud thinned and
let in a little light. He could just make out the small golden circle that lay far behind. It was more distant than the enemy,
but Quath said it was accelerating strongly. It would catch up with
Argo
soon.
Killeen tried to imagine what vessels could transport the enormous mass of the cosmic string. Well, he would see. All in good
time.
That great scythe would follow them toward the Eater, Quath said. So the Illuminates had decreed. They had stopped the gutting
of a world to send the ring along with
Argo
. Halted the building of their gray warrens. Interrupted the labors of millions of Cybers. For what, no one yet knew.
And after? There was still the enigma of the electromagnetic being. Somewhere ahead it lurked, tied to the disk of the Eater.
His brushing contact with that mind, back on New Bishop, had implied much while explaining nothing. It had spoken of his father.
Maybe Killeen had tempted fate by naming the star that waned behind them for Abraham. But perhaps Abraham was a key to all
this. Yet how could his father, lost at the fall of the Citadel, figure in the deliberations of a tenuous magnetic mind? Could
such a being revive those long dead?
His Grey Aspect droned for attention. Her voice came slowly, as though working across the abyss of time that separated Killeen
from the High Arcology Era.
There were records… I once saw… incomplete… from a time long gone… Some said… before the Chandeliers… before even the First
Comers…
from… a culture of legendary origin… called Earth. That too was a time… when men lived… beneath the will… of beings vaster.
Gods moved the heavens… determined… fate of men… and beasts… In those times… humanity scratched out its destiny… in soil…
under tortured skies… where huge things… in comfort… dwelled. Some thought these superior beings… were gods. Yet men lived
lives of meaning still… despite their small stature… in the scheme of things. So do not despair… Humanity has found zest and
verve… before… in the shadows of vastness… in a place called Greece
.
Killeen nodded. So even this was not new. Humanity’s most heartfelt joys and crushing defeats had been mere sideshows, small
dramas acted out at the feet of greater entities.
It did not matter whether one termed these forces gods or the products of further evolution. Enormity defied definitions.
Skysower was a living thing, but Killeen could not tell whether it even thought. Perhaps the distinction itself did not make
sense at that level of grandeur.
He looked up into the colossal sky. Fingers of knotted fire worked in molecular clouds. Storms frayed against the stars. Tides
of light ebbed and flowed with ponderous majesty. Amid it all,
Argo
sailed on, a mote.
“Shibo,” he whispered. “I love you.”
It seemed as though the words were new, and that he said them for the first time.
This summary was prepared at your request, in order to make intelligible the human point of view. I must confess that this
is fundamentally impossible even to anthology-class minds such as myself, and probably to any entity which does not arise
from an initial organic base. However, as much as is possible I shall take the cramped human version of their own history,
however distorted or inadequate this may be.
These matters were of no concern to us until the strange events at the collapse of Citadel Bishop (see appendix 1). Some effort
to understand that engagement led to my involvement with the humans who escaped our extermination.
I have made use of these survivors. They recently departed on an aged vessel of earlier human construction. They will arrive
at World #1936B. The destructive intercity competition there may be muted by their efforts. I have
arranged that they be met by our representatives, assuming the situation there has not deteriorated further by the time of
their arrival.
However, as discussed in appendix 2, other purposes are served by their leaving Snowglade and going to World #1936B at this
time. While these humans know nothing of the larger context, they may have methods of yielding further information of use
to us. In light of our ignorance of these beings, higher entities have decided to allow their continued survival so long as
they pose no serious irritant.
[Note: This entry is abstracted from larger files. Times refer to flat space-time measurements, though some important events
have occurred in the curved geometries of pulsar magneto-spheres and the black hole vicinity. Notes on one particular human
refuge, planet Snowglade, are included.]
Existing manuscripts and datalogs allow some preliminary description of events leading up to the current epoch. The historical
scheme of humanity falls into periods which reflect stages in the steady decline of humans at Galactic Center. Human terms
are used throughout, even where they are misleading or inadequate.
THE GREAT TIMES
This is a dimly remembered age spanning several thousand years. Humans moved freely between the close-packed stars of the
Center. Even then they had to stay out of the way of mech civilization.
Human legend holds that they arrived at Galactic Center in several waves.
First was a small band which had captured a mech near-light starship. Apparently they went undetected for a while because
of their conventional craft. This allowed stealthy investigation of mech ways and purposes. By observing mech civilization
and learning from it, humans attained a level of ability rare among organic forms. They apparently also formed alliances with
other organic forms nearby, though nothing is known of these.
The development of large pulsar configurations had begun shortly before this time and occupied much mech energy. Creation
of large electron-positron clouds contributed to the already considerable gamma-ray background near pulsars. These gamma rays
heated molecular clouds and prevented human incursions into several regions. The few remaining records suggest that the first
human expedition set about several pursuits involving organic civilizations which lived near the Center. However, these humans
then vanished.
The second wave of exploration came directly from Earth. An entire fleet of ramscoop vessels was launched within a century
after the mech-sponsored warfare, which had introduced alien sea life into Earth’s oceans.
Third came a larger expedition which sought the fabled Galactic Library which beacons had promised. Earth lies 8.63 kiloparsecs
from Galactic Center (see appendix 3 for Universal Standard comparisons). This implies that the ramscoop vessels had begun
their voyage in an age when the Library was still announcing itself. Well before their arrival the Library had disappeared,
spirited away by unknown parties. Efforts to find it failed. The Library apparently contained the records of many extinct
organic races. Searches
for it tapered off when mechs finally took notice of these intruders and set about opposing them.
THE CHANDELIER AGE
Here humans gathered into large cities in space for protection. Surviving logs from starfaring vessels show that mechs had
begun to make interstellar travel dangerous. Also, radiation increased in the zone around the black hole at Absolute Center
(sometimes “True Center”). This made conditions harder for organic forms everywhere nearby.
Scholars of this time studied the earliest humans known at Galactic Center and much of our knowledge of earlier ages descends
from the detailed searches made then. Much art and literature survives from the centuries marking the transition into the
Chandeliers, though most of this is abstract and useless for historical purposes.
HIGH ARCOLOGY ERA
This came after the “Hunker Down” (slang)—the exodus from the Chandeliers to planetary surfaces. Mech competition drove this
desperate retreat. On most worlds, in the need for security humankind was forced into huge Arcologies, single-building cities
which were still technically advanced and retained many facets of Chandelier life.
Planet Snowglade was a particularly fertile site and received extensive colonizing. Assignment of territories was made by
Family structure, as elsewhere. The trauma of the “Hunker Down” drove religious fervor. This is best considered as a form
of human art (appendix 4), though much must be interpolated here to render this mode of expression into rational terms.
LATE ARCOLOGY ERA
The last small Chandeliers and freighting ships were abandoned at the opening of this time. All starflight ceased. Even interplanetary
travel and harvesting of resources became difficult because of the mechs. Moist, plant-bearing planets were previously thought
to be uninteresting to the mechs. Even these now came under threat. Since such worlds were where the Arcologies flourished
best, humanity was further circumscribed.
HIGH CITADEL AGE
The Arcologies became untenable under further mech pressure. Breakup of the mountain-sized Arcologies followed, primarily
because of difficulties in maintaining the high techcraft. Many retreated into the less conspicuous Citadels.
Mech depredations were steady, but most damage was
done by side effects of the expanding mech cities, which consumed resources and altered the biosphere. Many Arcologies were
mined for materials and ores. Citadels the size of small towns survived. Mechs began to spread over most of Snowglade at this
time, spurring climate-changing processes.
Many human-carried Aspects date from this time, apparently because the breakdown of the human infrastructure threatened the
human database held in fixed computing sites. New skills arose as humanity began to supplement its dwindling agriculture with
hunter-gatherer techniques and especially raids on mech storehouses. Humans began to lose their own technology and concentrated
on reworking mechtech. No longer potential rivals, they became pests scratching at the edges.
THE CALAMITY(ON SNOWGLADE)
This opened the final chapter in the conquest of Snowglade. Though Family Citadels had been tolerated for some time, and humans
had been used occasionally as pawns in mech intercity rivalry, their usefulness was marginal. Each Citadel was attacked in
turn as mech resources allowed. Each Citadel of the human Families fell separately, banishing their survivors to the raw countryside.
It had become apparent by this time that Snowglade’s star, Denix, was following an orbit designed to bring it close to
the black hole region. Mech activities had brought this about through electrodynamic coupling to molecular clouds, using a
magnetic grappling effect to convey momentum. This means that Snowglade will inevitably become uninhabitable by organic lifeforms.
This orbit change appears to be unknown to humans. Generally their scholarly speculation concentrates upon the large scale
activity at True Center.
Some humans still survive on Snowglade. The complex events surrounding the Calamity at Citadel Bishop suggest that some humans
should be kept intact in case they are somehow important to the events of that day. It is apparent that none of the principals,
mech or human, understands more than a fraction of the continuing puzzle.
This report is most respectfully submitted. Appendices to follow.
Please enjoy Gregory Benford’s classic novella set in the Galactic Center Universe