Charles Sheffield - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Very impressive. Drake recalled that one galactic revolution took about two hundred million years. Humans had survived and prospered for more than six billion years.

“But it’s not like that anymore,” Tom added. “I’m going to show you a recent time evolution — in terms familiar to you, I will display what has been happening in the past few tens of millions of Earth years.”

Again there was a tremor in his voice, a hint of uncounted minds quivering beyond the gate and walls imposed by Drake. The static view outside the picture window began to change.

At first it was no more than a hint of asymmetry in the great pattern of spirals, one side of the Galaxy showing a shade less full than the other. After a few moments the differences became more pronounced and more specific. A dark sector was appearing on one side of the disk. On the outermost spiral arm, far across the Galaxy from Sol, the bright points of light were snuffed out one by one. Drake thought at first of an eclipse, as though some unimaginably big and dark sphere was occulting the whole galactic plane. Then he realized that the analogy was no good. The blackness at the edge of the Galaxy was not of constant diameter. It was increasing in size. Some outside influence was moving in to invade the galactic disk, and growing constantly as it did so.

“And now you see it as it is today,” Tom said quietly. The lights had come on again within the room, dimming the display outside. Drake did not know if that was under his control or Tom’s, as Tom continued, “Except, of course, that it has not ended. The change continues, faster than ever.”

A crescent wedge had been carved from the Galaxy, cutting out a substantial fraction of the whole disk.

“Colonies vanish. Without a signal, without a sign.” Tom sounded bewildered. “If we assume that all the composites in the vanished zone have been destroyed, as the silence would suggest, then billions of sentient beings are dying from moment to moment even while we are speaking.”

It was a tragedy beyond all tragedies. Drake had become used to the tours of a changing solar system, provided on each resurrection until overstimulation led to numbness; but death was different.

He had been touched by death just five times in his own life: his parents, Ana’s parents, and the death of Ana herself. Those single incidents loomed enormous, but they sat within a century of larger disasters — of war and famine and disease. Thirty million had been killed in two world wars, twenty million dead of influenza in a single year, twenty million starved to death by the deliberate act of one powerful man.

Those were huge, unthinkable numbers, but still they were millions, not billions. They were nothing, compared with what he was facing now.

Tom said softly, “Our galaxy is being invaded by something from outside. We are being destroyed, faster than we can escape.”

Drake knew that. He also knew he did not want to face it. “Your problem is terrible, but it has nothing to do with me. More than that, there is nothing that I can do about it.”

“You do not know, unless you try.”

“Try what? You are being ridiculous.”

“If we knew what to try, we would long since have tried it. Drake, we did not rouse you from dormancy on a whim, or without prior thought. You are from an earlier age, more familiar with aggression. If anyone can suggest a way to protect us, you can do so.”

“Why me? There were fifty thousand others in the cryotanks, all from my era. They were resurrected, every one of

them. I assume that some at least are still conscious entities.”

“Most are. But they no longer exist as isolated intelligences. All, except you, form part of composites. The result lacks — please do not misunderstand me — your primitive drive and aggression.”

“You need me because I’m a barbarian !”

“Exactly.”

“To try and do what you refuse to do.”

“No. What we are unable to do. As I said, you are our last hope, and it is a desperate hope indeed. Drake, let me suggest that you have no choice. If you want Ana to return to you, ever, you must help us.”

“Blackmail.”

“Not at all. Consider. If you fail to help, and if human civilization falls, so too do the electronic data banks. You will then cease to exist, and so will any possibility of resurrecting Ana. This is not, in the language of game theory, a two-person zero-sum game between you and the rest of humanity. Only if humanity wins can you possibly win. In order for that maximum benefit to be reached, by you and by humanity, it is necessary for you yourself to suffer a period of great effort, with no guarantee of return on that effort. No guarantee, indeed, that your effort is even needed. It is conceivable that, without you, we might come up with an answer to our problem tomorrow. But I do not think so. We have tried everything that we know. Well, Drake?”

Drake shook his head and stared out at the mutilated disk of the Galaxy. “You sure don’t sound much like Tom Lambert. Tom couldn’t have talked about zero-sum games to save his own life.”

“This was your chosen medium of interaction, not ours. The composite that is addressing you is purely electronic. And talk of zero-sum games may be needed to save all our lives.”

The scene beyond the window changed. Again it was the seacoast villa, looking across a bay tossed now by whitecaps beneath racing storm clouds.

“You see,” Tom said. “You make my point. That is your vision, not ours. But we do not dispute its accuracy, as a possible harbinger of things to come.”

Drake turned moodily to face the south, where a single sailboat was running for shelter. A squall struck as he watched, catching the little vessel and leaning its pink sails far over to starboard.

“I think we ought to start over,” he said at last. “Tell me and show me everything, right from the beginning. Then I have a thousand questions.”

“I know more than Apollo,

For oft when he lies sleeping

I see the stars at bloody wars

In the wounded welkin weeping.”

Drake could have anticipated the problem. Composites came in all sizes and types, remote and nearby, wise and foolish, planetary and free-space, organic and inorganic. Their constant interactions blurred the lines of identity, until it was not clear which elements were speaking or which were in control. Since he saw that problem in others, he had to assume that the same thing might happen to him when he worked with them. Yet he must, at all costs, maintain his individual character and agenda.

He decided that he had to create a private record of his own thoughts and actions. It seemed not a luxury or a personal indulgence, but a necessity.

The irony of the whole situation was not lost on him. He had been a lifelong and dedicated pacifist, hating all things military — so much so that until Ana went into the cryowomb and he was desperate for money, he would not consider military music commissions, no matter how much they offered. Now, so far in the future that he did not like to think about it, he was an aggression consultant to the whole Galaxy.

His private thought: the incompetent and the ignorant are now leading the innocent; but he did not offer that comment to anyone else.

“What have you tried?” Drake was in working session with Tom Lambert. He was sure that he couldn’t really help, but he was also sure that the composites wouldn’t accept a negative answer. More than that, for Ana’s sake he could not accept it. He had to pretend, to himself more than anyone, that he knew what he was doing.