Stephen Baxter: Last and First Contacts

It was another pretty morning at Dreamers’ Lake. But the Hammer’s huge crater-pocked face was reflected in the waters; even as I watched it seemed to slide across the sky like a cloud. I felt a subtle quake as the gravity fields of two planets meshed.

A second tractor was drawn up roughly on the pebbled beach. Two figures stood by the water; my suit’s heads-up identified them as Captain Zuba and Ulf Thoring. Thoring was standing awkwardly, as if he’d been injured.

And a third figure stood in the lake itself, the water lapping around his waist. He was close to the big mound we’d labelled Juliet. My heads-up alerted me, but I knew who he was.

‘He has a weapon,’ Zuba said.

‘ What ?’

‘It’s a laser gun from the IGWI kit,’ said Thoring. His voice was strangled. He was holding his side, and his forehead was bruised and bleeding, as if it had been thrown against his faceplate.

‘What happened to you?’

‘He beat me up. Bisset.’

‘You deserved it, you little prick,’ Zuba murmured. ‘Knilans. Fix this so we can get out of here.’

I stepped towards the water. I noticed that many of the mounds looked damaged – scarred, stitched by straight-line wounds. ‘Ramone? Are you okay?’

He didn’t reply.

I racked my brains for some way to get through to him. ‘Umm – “Tis not hard, I think, for men so old as we to keep the peace.”’

I thought I saw him relax, subtly. ‘Shakespeare.’

‘Talk to me, Ramone.’

‘Ask him.’ He gestured with the laser at Thoring.

Hastily, sketchily, Ulf told me what had happened.

The IGWI team had completed their station on the surface of GC-IV. This is simple in principle, just a network of nodes connected by laser light; perturbations of the laser echoes can be used to detect the passage of gravity waves. The ancient waves the IGWI boys seek are stretched, attenuated and overlaid, and it is taking an interferometer, a super-telescope made up of many stations across interstellar distances, to map them.

Their work done, the IGWI boys dismantled their gear. But on a whim, probably motivated by Ulf’s overhearing my conversation with Bisset, they stopped by Dreamers’ Lake, unpacked their lasers, and enjoyed a little target practice.

Bisset said, ‘These are minds , Ulf. You burst them like balloons.’

Thoring sounded aggrieved. ‘But it was only a bit of a laugh. For God’s sake—’ He gestured at the sky. ‘In twelve hours none of this will survive anyhow.’

I turned back to Bisset. ‘You punished him, Ramone. You made your point. So what are you doing out there?’

‘I’ve been thinking about what we said. Juliet.’

I felt a deep knot of dread gather in my stomach. For the first time I began to get the feeling that this might all be my fault. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You showed me the signal of her mind. She is afraid. She knows , Susan.’

‘How can she?’

‘The Hammer is the size of Mars. Perhaps the mounds can sense the tides. It’s at least possible, isn’t it? Even I can feel the quakes. Juliet faces extermination, yet she has never known death: what a terrible thing.’

‘Okay. Even supposing that’s true, what are you going to do? Put her out of her misery? Finish the job Ulf and his thugs started?’

‘You don’t understand.’ He sounded offended. ‘ I’ve known death. I lost my wife, my daughter. I’ve had to live with that.’ I knew little about his past. ‘Maybe if I can teach Juliet what I’ve learned, it will help her, and her kin, accept what is to come.’

Then I saw it. ‘Shit. You’re going to kill yourself, aren’t you?’

‘Knilans, Zuba. This is a secure line; Bisset can’t hear us. I don’t think this has anything to do with the mounds. It’s all about the bullying and the bullshit from the IGWI boys. Bisset wants to make a statement – to rise above them on his own terms.’

‘Nice theory,’ I replied. ‘But I can’t use it. I think I have to deal with him in his own framework. Unless you have a better idea, Captain.’

Zuba hesitated for one second. ‘You know him better than I do. You scientist types are nothing but trouble. Get this resolved.’

I cut back to the open comms, and struggled to make Bisset understand. ‘Ramone – it can’t work. There’s no interface between the two of you. Not even a cognitive net. If you die now, she will never know. ’

‘But nobody even knew that mounds like this could be sentient before the discoveries on Mars. You say she won’t know. Are you sure? ’

I was lost.

Zuba took over. ‘Citizen Associate, it’s at least a fair bet Knilans is right. This mound will understand nothing. If you slit open your suit – have you ever seen a suffocation? – it will take longer to die than you might think. And in all those long seconds the seed of doubt will grow in your mind: I have thrown my life away for nothing. ’

I could see Bisset’s uncertainty. ‘Then I’ll just stand here until my air runs out.’

‘That’s your privilege,’ Zuba said mildly. ‘And it will be my privilege to stand here with you.’

Bisset seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘Call it my own brand of xenoethics.’ She turned to Ulf Thoring. ‘Have you told the Citizen Associate about the results of the IGWI programme?’

‘No.’ Ulf said defensively. ‘They’re not published. And besides—’

‘Tell him now.’

Structure, Ulf told him, has been detected in the signals from the beginning of time. No, not just structure – life , its unmistakeable signature, with traces of mind susceptible to standard animistic deconvolution. Even in those very first instants, as cosmic energies raged, life flourished, blossomed, died, and was aware. The study of this primordial life is the whole purpose of the IGWI programme – though, as nothing has yet been published, it is still a matter of gossip on academic sites.

This stunning discovery has led to a revision of our theories of life’s origin. Perhaps the essence of life was born in those first instants. Or perhaps, some speculate, it was injected into our infant universe, from – somewhere else.

‘Okay,’ Zuba said. ‘Here’s what I take from all of that, in my simple way. Everywhere we have travelled we have found life and mind. But it is not like us . It exists on utterly different scales from us – hugely more extensive in space, and in time.’

She was right. At best multi-celled forms like us are an episode in the long dream of bacterial life. Away from Earth, we’ve found a few fossils; that’s all.

Zuba said, ‘There are similarities in the cognitive maps of your pet stromatolite, Bisset, and the antique minds from the inflationary period. Similarities . But we are different; we are nothing but transient structures that soon dissolve back into the mush. You’re right, Citizen Associate; only we humans know death. And in a universe that teems with life, we humans are still alone, in a way Juliet has never been alone. That is why I will wait for you, Citizen Associate, until that damn moon hammers me into the ground like a tent peg. Because all we humans have is each other.’

You have to admit she was impressive.

Bisset thought it over. ‘I should get out of this pond.’

‘Good idea,’ I said fervently.

Bisset glanced once more at Juliet. She was unharmed, save for a slight scarring from our cognitive net. He dropped the laser, which sank out of sight into the water, and began to wade towards us. ‘Tell me one more thing, Captain.’

‘Yes?’

‘So we humans work for each other. But why are we here ? We spoke about this, Susan. Why explore, why go on and on?’