Ken MacLeod - Learning the World

“I know that!” cried Horrocks. People turned and stared. He lowered his voice. “The founders know that too. What we’re — what I’m asking you, is whether you can see a way around that, some way to maybe channel all that energy and urge to explore into something other than…” His voice trailed off in the face of their set, sceptical smiles.

“I can tell you this,” said Atomic. “And you can tell my caremother and her clique and anybody else you care to: if we don’t get out, our energy and urges are going to be channelled into something they won’t like ,”

Grant nodded. “You said it, Atomic.”

Atomic stood up. “I think we’re finished here.” Horrocks watched them leave.

The Engineer’s Dream was known as a deep hang, a disreputable venue near the axis of the forward cone, popular with habitat trainers, microlight pilots, maintenance coordinators, and other low-responsibility crew members. Horrocks drifted through the hatch into its hazy air and narrow-spectrum artificial light and toed off for the drinks wall, where he broke off a bulb, crooked his elbow through a loop, and turned to survey the scene. Time of day wasn’t an issue here, the entire circadian rhythm being based on on-shift or off-shift, but the place was in one of its phases where only a score or so of people were in. Good: he wanted that sense of drinking at the wrong hour.

He exchanged nods with a few people hanging in the central mesh, none of whom he fancied talking to, and then noticed Genome Console at the far end on her own. Focused on an inhaler, she didn’t see him so he pinged her. She turned, saw him, waved and rolled to place her feet on the wall. One swift thrust brought her over. A neat somersault docked her in the same loop as himself. She wore something like an opaque black sphere with holes for wrists, ankles and neck, but a sphere that had crinkled and shrunk inward to cling here and there, mostly there. Her fair hair floated wild. “Well, hello,” she said. “Where have you been? The gang all thought you’d gone flatfoot.”

“It was just for a few days,” said Horrocks.

“A few days at a time,” she said. “You’ve been going down there for weeks.”

“Doing business with passengers.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute. Fancy a sniff?” She waved her inhaler. Horrocks checked the cartridge: red clouds and a lightning-flash, an obscure brand name.

“No thanks.” Horrocks swigged a squirt. “But you’re right. I got caught up in something.”

“Ah!” said Genome, her eyes bright from her sniff. “You and that flatfoot girl.” She tilted her head back, sighting him along her nose. “She’s trouble.”

“She is that,” Horrocks said. “How do you know about her, anyway?”

“She’s biologged your little contretemps already.”

It had been hours. “You follow it?”

“I track the feeds. Bad habit I picked up from Grey.”

“Oh,” said Horrocks. For some reason it was a name he didn’t welcome hearing. “How is he, by the way?”

“Perverse,” said Genome. “Like all that Red Sun crowd.”

“Red Sun crowd?” Horrocks had an alarmed moment when he thought she alluded to his dealings with the Red Sun Circle.

“You know, all the people from back there.” She waved over her shoulder. “The old crew hands are as bad as passengers, sometimes.”

“Oh, right. They’ve been so long in the ship it’s like—”

“They have to make life more complicated than it needs to be,” she said.

“You’re right there,” said Horrocks, with more force than he’d meant.

“Ah!” said Genome again. “Her caremother got under your skin, did she?” She grinned at his open mouth. “Atomic biologged that, too.”

Horrocks had to laugh. “What do you think of the substance of it?”

“The argument? Huh.” She took a long sniff and stared into the distance. “I sure don’t want these little flatfoot breeders on the ship for much longer. Or their parents, come to that.”

“Just go ahead as planned?”

“Yup.”

“What about the aliens?”

“Rock the aliens,” said Genome. “Look, in fifty years they’ll have data colonies and science robots and all that Civil Worlds shower crawling all over them. They might as well get used to us in the meantime. Let it sink in that they’re not — ta-da! — alone in the universe, and they’ll soon sort out their little squabbles.”

“Suppose they have a little squabble with us?”

“So what?” Genome said. “What are they going to send up against us? Kites?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard what I’ve said on that score,” said Horrocks. “I’m more concerned about what fighting them would do to us.”

Genome shrugged. “We’d have plenty of time to prepare. Discuss. Sort out the morality of the thing. It’s not something you can do anything about now.”

Horrocks broke off another drink. “I suppose not,” he said. “I have a nasty feeling I’ve been inveigled into one of these founder intrigues that has nothing whatever to do with the ostensible bone of contention.”

“Yeah,” said Genome. “Probably some speculative ramp at the back of it.” She sighed. “Grey was always doing things like that. Watched the terrestrials market like a crow eyeing a caterpillar, every time he fired off one of his daft rants.”

“Past tense now, is he?”

She shifted in the loop. “As far as I’m concerned, yes.”

Horrocks guessed he mirrored her embarrassment. They gazed at each other for a minute. Having known Genome since childhood no longer struck Horrocks as a difficulty. In a sense he had not known her at all. Her directness was refreshing, her sharing of his age and background attractive. He told her so.

She waved her inhaler under his nose. “It’s a strong anti-inhibitor,” she said. “And you’ve been sidestreaming it for half an hour.”

“You have me at an advantage,” he said.

“So I have,” she said, and took it.

“Tapes!” Nollam shouted. “Tapes!”

As Darvin and Kwarive rushed in to join the growing huddle around the telekinematographic receiver, two of Nollam’s fellow-technicians scrambled and fumbled to load and thread what looked like two kinematograph reels, one full and one empty, with no projector between them.

Darvin peered over Orro’s shoulder, conscious of Kwarive’s chin and hand-claws digging into his.

“We should have had them ready to roll,” he heard Orro grumble. He paid no attention. The screen demanded it all. The press was still growing. Behind and around him people were clambering up racks and leaning forward.

The moving picture was a grainier black-and-white than a kinematographic film, yet less jerky, more fluid and realistic. It showed the map Kwarive had drawn, and peering over it their own staring faces from a minute earlier, then them turning and running out of view. An uneasy laugh went up.

The image changed again, to a figure like a human being without wings, and with small eyes, ears, and nose. The face appeared hairless, with a tuft on the crown of the head. Its mouth was moving, it seemed in synchrony with the sound that boomed from the loudspeakers of the apparatus: EEE UUUUMMMM III-IHHH EEESSS EEEEE… It went on like that, a sound like surf in a cave. It was hard to hear, for a moment, as everybody in the room gasped or cried out, Kwarive loudest of all. Darvin shook with astonishment. Thus far he had not so much as imagined the aliens, and the vague swirl of images in his head that he’d associated with them had been of things far more alien than this.

The alien turned and pointed. What had seemed baggy, wrinkled skin on his arms and chest slipped and moved, revealing itself to be a body covering, like a cloak but fitted and shaped. The picture became for a moment incomprehensible, a patchwork of varied shapes interspersed with bright surfaces and overlaid with fuzzy white blobs. It rotated about a vivid white line drawn from the top of the screen to near the middle, and gave way to a much darker area dotted with clumps of bright spots. This was repeated several times, alternating light and dark.