think that, wouldn’t you? ) and I set the micro-scale babbages skittering across print-out and they report back in seconds that it’s clear. No nasty viruses have impacted our retinae, raced up our optic nerves and taken over our minds ( but they would say that, wouldn’t they? ) and paranoia beckons—
Enough. Ignore your feelings. Trust the computers.
(And yes, I know the Langford hack is just a viral meme in its own right, replicating down the centuries like an old joke, wasting resources every time we act on the insignificant off chance that if someone could think of it, somehow it could be done. What kind of twisted mind starts these things?)
There are two dozen ships in the wing this watch, and since just before the alert (all of ninety seconds ago) every ship-to-ship radio has been shut down and physically unplugged: total radio silence is the ships’ first reflex, even before they warn their crews. Decades of nothing coming through but the odd rock, decades of drills for every imaginable (and then some) contingency. Everybody in the Division has to do it, the stints come round regular as orbits, and every time it’s drilled into you that if something does happen, you’re on your own.
We’re all right behind you. But when you’re up against the superhuman, the orders run in reverse: the first is sauve qui peut , the second is ‘havoc’, the third is ‘no quarter’ … you get the picture. Our swords are permanently notched.
Thinking for myself is what I’m here for. At this moment the glorious possibility of First Contact is clamouring with the alarming thought that this thing originates with our long-departed—or ever-present—enemies. The little probe has closed its distance by ten miles, and seems to be decelerating: its puffs of reaction-mass volatiles another piece of evidence that it isn’t some long-lost voyager.
‘Hailing it,’ I say, and key out a standard all-bands interrogative and a single radar sweep. To my surprise there’s an immediate response. The babbages chatter for a second and then my suit’s interpreters spell out the message:
‘Cometary mining vessel NK slash eight-seven-one out of Ship City to unidentified, please respond, over.’
I don’t take it in; my mind’s still full of clutter about this craft’s being (since it’s obviously not the enemy coming back and telling us resistance is useless, etc.) a genuine alien space probe. To my lasting embarrassment, the only thing I can think of (but did I think?) is to hit the video transmission and say, my voice squeaky with astonishment:
‘Speak Angloslav , robot?’
More computer chatter, then a human voice:
‘English?’
‘Yes, English,’ I babble happily, still speaking falsetto, still hearing space opera, ‘you pick it up from old transmissions, yes? Language has changed—’
At that point the video input starts up, the image grainy through anti-virus snow. It’s the face of an old, old man. He’s had the telomere hack, and some fairly primitive rejuvenation, but that’s it. The significance of all the machine has said dawns on me. This is no alien emissary, but something almost as strange: the digital ghost of an escaped prisoner, one of the Outwarders’ bondsmen who, two centuries ago, had fled their orbital work camp for whatever lay beyond the Gate.
‘Much has changed,’ I tell it.
Remembering my first encounter with what turned out to be the replicated minds of Wilde and Meg could still make my ears burn, as I found when the recollection came to me while I drove down a relatively clear stretch of the trail, just north of Ealing Forest.
I knew roughly who or what he was straight away. He had no idea who we were, and was surprised when we told him. I don’t think he believed us. Partially overcoming our mutual suspicions took hours of talk, followed by almost direct physical contact before Wilde and Meg would accept that we were human. Even after we had taken the stored cells
Enough. Ignore your feelings. Trust the computers.
(And yes, I know the Langford hack is just a viral meme in its own right, replicating down the centuries like an old joke, wasting resources every time we act on the insignificant off chance that if someone could think of it, somehow it could be done. What kind of twisted mind starts these things?)
There are two dozen ships in the wing this watch, and since just before the alert (all of ninety seconds ago) every ship-to-ship radio has been shut down and physically unplugged: total radio silence is the ships’ first reflex, even before they warn their crews. Decades of nothing coming through but the odd rock, decades of drills for every imaginable (and then some) contingency. Everybody in the Division has to do it, the stints come round regular as orbits, and every time it’s drilled into you that if something does happen, you’re on your own.
We’re all right behind you. But when you’re up against the superhuman, the orders run in reverse: the first is sauve qui peut , the second is ‘havoc’, the third is ‘no quarter’ … you get the picture. Our swords are permanently notched.
Thinking for myself is what I’m here for. At this moment the glorious possibility of First Contact is clamouring with the alarming thought that this thing originates with our long-departed—or ever-present—enemies. The little probe has closed its distance by ten miles, and seems to be decelerating: its puffs of reaction-mass volatiles another piece of evidence that it isn’t some long-lost voyager.
‘Hailing it,’ I say, and key out a standard all-bands interrogative and a single radar sweep. To my surprise there’s an immediate response. The babbages chatter for a second and then my suit’s interpreters spell out the message:
‘Cometary mining vessel NK slash eight-seven-one out of Ship City to unidentified, please respond, over.’
I don’t take it in; my mind’s still full of clutter about this craft’s being (since it’s obviously not the enemy coming back and telling us resistance is useless, etc.) a genuine alien space probe. To my lasting embarrassment, the only thing I can think of (but did I think?) is to hit the video transmission and say, my voice squeaky with astonishment:
‘Speak Angloslav , robot?’
More computer chatter, then a human voice:
‘English?’
‘Yes, English,’ I babble happily, still speaking falsetto, still hearing space opera, ‘you pick it up from old transmissions, yes? Language has changed—’
At that point the video input starts up, the image grainy through anti-virus snow. It’s the face of an old, old man. He’s had the telomere hack, and some fairly primitive rejuvenation, but that’s it. The significance of all the machine has said dawns on me. This is no alien emissary, but something almost as strange: the digital ghost of an escaped prisoner, one of the Outwarders’ bondsmen who, two centuries ago, had fled their orbital work camp for whatever lay beyond the Gate.
‘Much has changed,’ I tell it.
Remembering my first encounter with what turned out to be the replicated minds of Wilde and Meg could still make my ears burn, as I found when the recollection came to me while I drove down a relatively clear stretch of the trail, just north of Ealing Forest.
I knew roughly who or what he was straight away. He had no idea who we were, and was surprised when we told him. I don’t think he believed us. Partially overcoming our mutual suspicions took hours of talk, followed by almost direct physical contact before Wilde and Meg would accept that we were human. Even after we had taken the stored cells
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