Read Online Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) by Jeffrey A. Carver - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeffrey A. Carver
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machine. But it's...sent by others who are, I assure you, very far away. And I've never known it to attempt anything that wasn't...helpful to those it visited. >>
It seemed to Bandicut that the quarx was more than a little hesitant when it spoke about the translator. He wondered why. /Well, that doesn't sound like such a big deal—identifying some space rubble,/ he said cautiously. /But I have to say, you don't sound entirely convinced about it yourself./
>> What? No, no—the translator is trustworthy. But it's not...always easy...to do what it wants, is the problem. Look, would it help if I filled you in with some background? >>
/Isn't that what I've been asking for?/
>> I thought you...never mind. Just watch, and listen.... >>
—— . . .
*
The information swirled by like a churning white-water rapids, and it seemed that all he could do was sample here and there, and file for future analysis. But that was difficult; perhaps he would be better off just jumping in and riding downstream with the flow...
It was millions of years ago, just as human science had surmised, that an orphaned body later to be named Triton had fallen into the gravitational influence of the solar system. Charlie and his translator were aboard, though the quarx was in stasis-sleep, and would remain that way for millennia yet to come, until awakened by the translator. But the translator never slept. It probed ceaselessly, monitoring the inner solar system and the evolution of sentient life on the third planet, unmistakably marked by first gradual—then abrupt—transformations of its biosphere. When there were visible events to be observed, the translator recorded them, from volcanoes to atomic explosions to the migrations of small vessels out of the atmosphere. It studied events of all kinds, whether apparently significant or not, and in its own methodical way, drew conclusions about the events it had studied.
Much of what Charlie knew, he had learned directly from the translator. Since his awakening, he had viewed years of reruns of Earth television, all recorded by the translator in that window of time when TV signals had been broadcast into space, before laser and opfiber transmission had mostly ended the free show. He owed much of his knowledge of human culture to such broadcasts.
He'd also gleaned hints of what it was he was doing here, what purpose he intended to serve. Bandicut could only register astonishment: how could the quarx not know his own mission? But it was not his first, far from it, and he had yet to fully understand a mission prior to undertaking it.
The other thing that astonished Bandicut, as he caught all of this in a great swirling stream, was that the quarx really didn't know how the translator performed many of the feats in which the quarx himself was a participant. Surely, if he'd been alive in the translator for millions of years, didn't he have to know how it worked? No no no, whispered a quarxly voice, almost lost in the undercurrent. I'm not the master of that science. The quarx knew how to use the translator, but it was not actually his machine, not a quarxly machine at all.
But where...how...had Charlie come to be in such a time and place...?
—shift—
The images changed like a whirlpool yawning. There were glimpses of dozens of worlds, dozens of hosts in quarxly lives past...it was like a flickering of holocards...and then the image settled, and filled with the sounds and impressions of other beings, alien beings, living on this very moon. The beings who had left the metal deposits? Their footsteps echoed around the translator, their voices and activities an incomprehensible murmur. For an instant Bandicut thought, with a flash of alarm, that they were here on Triton now —
—and then he realized that this scene was far, far in the past, long before Triton had ever come to the solar system. It was the moon as it had been, not just in the past, but so deep in the past that
It seemed to Bandicut that the quarx was more than a little hesitant when it spoke about the translator. He wondered why. /Well, that doesn't sound like such a big deal—identifying some space rubble,/ he said cautiously. /But I have to say, you don't sound entirely convinced about it yourself./
>> What? No, no—the translator is trustworthy. But it's not...always easy...to do what it wants, is the problem. Look, would it help if I filled you in with some background? >>
/Isn't that what I've been asking for?/
>> I thought you...never mind. Just watch, and listen.... >>
—
*
The information swirled by like a churning white-water rapids, and it seemed that all he could do was sample here and there, and file for future analysis. But that was difficult; perhaps he would be better off just jumping in and riding downstream with the flow...
It was millions of years ago, just as human science had surmised, that an orphaned body later to be named Triton had fallen into the gravitational influence of the solar system. Charlie and his translator were aboard, though the quarx was in stasis-sleep, and would remain that way for millennia yet to come, until awakened by the translator. But the translator never slept. It probed ceaselessly, monitoring the inner solar system and the evolution of sentient life on the third planet, unmistakably marked by first gradual—then abrupt—transformations of its biosphere. When there were visible events to be observed, the translator recorded them, from volcanoes to atomic explosions to the migrations of small vessels out of the atmosphere. It studied events of all kinds, whether apparently significant or not, and in its own methodical way, drew conclusions about the events it had studied.
Much of what Charlie knew, he had learned directly from the translator. Since his awakening, he had viewed years of reruns of Earth television, all recorded by the translator in that window of time when TV signals had been broadcast into space, before laser and opfiber transmission had mostly ended the free show. He owed much of his knowledge of human culture to such broadcasts.
He'd also gleaned hints of what it was he was doing here, what purpose he intended to serve. Bandicut could only register astonishment: how could the quarx not know his own mission? But it was not his first, far from it, and he had yet to fully understand a mission prior to undertaking it.
The other thing that astonished Bandicut, as he caught all of this in a great swirling stream, was that the quarx really didn't know how the translator performed many of the feats in which the quarx himself was a participant. Surely, if he'd been alive in the translator for millions of years, didn't he have to know how it worked? No no no, whispered a quarxly voice, almost lost in the undercurrent. I'm not the master of that science. The quarx knew how to use the translator, but it was not actually his machine, not a quarxly machine at all.
But where...how...had Charlie come to be in such a time and place...?
—shift—
The images changed like a whirlpool yawning. There were glimpses of dozens of worlds, dozens of hosts in quarxly lives past...it was like a flickering of holocards...and then the image settled, and filled with the sounds and impressions of other beings, alien beings, living on this very moon. The beings who had left the metal deposits? Their footsteps echoed around the translator, their voices and activities an incomprehensible murmur. For an instant Bandicut thought, with a flash of alarm, that they were here on Triton now —
—and then he realized that this scene was far, far in the past, long before Triton had ever come to the solar system. It was the moon as it had been, not just in the past, but so deep in the past that
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