Charles Sheffield - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

As the field of view of the ship’s sensors performed its steady turn in space, Drake watched the grand sweep of the galaxies. They had not changed. He had changed. When had he lost his will and daring? When had he become so cautious?

Long ago, without a second thought, he had risked everything. Now, no matter what he did, he would be risking less than everything. Other versions of him surely still existed, even if they happened to be at the far edge of the universe. They did not know that he existed — they would think that he had died fifteen billion years ago, when the ship was swallowed by the caesura. But what of that? They should still be there. Did he have anything to lose, if now he risked the dark menace ahead?

“Aye, but to die, and go we know not where …”

Was that all it was? Simple fear of death?

“Are we still heading for the galaxy?”

“Yes. We have not changed our course.”

“Then forget the alternative. Hold our path. Take us to the nearest world where you are detecting a source of S-wave messages.”

There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.

And how long since he had thought of that? It was time to take a chance, and test the kindness of reality.

Taking a chance on one thing did not mean abandoning caution in everything else.

Drake elected to remain conscious, though not embodied, through the whole slow approach to the galaxy. The ship’s speed had to be subluminal. Meanwhile, the S-wave messages flashed and flickered ahead from spiral arm to spiral arm, as enigmatic as ever. At Drake’s suggestion, the ship’s brain assumed that the messages were deliberately encrypted and tried to decipher them. The effort consumed the bulk of the ship’s computation powers for twelve thousand years. There was no useful result for either type 1 or type 2 messages.

While this was going on, Drake constantly monitored the galaxy ahead. He had no idea of the range of weapons that remained there. At any moment, the ship’s approach might be detected, and an alien force could reach out to consume them. He was ready to power the ship down totally and hope that silence would end the attack, or if that failed to turn the ship around and try to outrun the destruction.

The thirteenth millennium brought the change. It occurred while Drake and the ship were analyzing the comparative freedoms and restrictions of their two mentalities.

“What would you have done, in a similar situation?” The ship was dissatisfied with its own performance.

“Assuming that I were a ship, with your history and your inorganic intelligence? The first thing I would do, after Drake Merlin insisted on being sent as a superluminal signal to this galaxy, is tell myself that embodied humans tend to be impulsive and make decisions too quickly. We evolved that way, because the old human body rarely lasted a century. We were always in a hurry, we had to be. So as a ship I would have spent a long time evaluating my own possible actions. Then I hope I would have asked what could be done at the S-wave detection structure we built and nowhere else. When all those things were done, I would have headed this way.”

“And what would you have done as a human in the same situation?”

“If I could see no possible further use for my existence—”

Drake’s comments on suicide, an idea alien to the ship’s intelligence, were interrupted.

A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-. The ship’s S-wave detector screeched and warbled in overload as a message blared into it.

A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-.

“Is it coming from the galaxy?” Drake had to send his own thought at maximum volume to penetrate the curtain of incoming noise.

A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-W-A-.

“I do not know.” The ship’s own signal was barely intelligible. “The source is so powerful. It comes from everywhere. Wait.” The ship de-tuned its receiver, and the volume of signal suddenly dropped to a tolerable level.

WARNING. YOU ARE ENTERING A DANGEROUS AND QUARANTINED AREA. DO NOT PROCEED FARTHER WITHOUT INSTRUCTIONS. REPEAT, YOU ARE ENTERING A DANGEROUS AND QUARANTINED AREA. HALT, AND DO NOT PROCEED WITHOUT INSTRUCTIONS. WORKING S-WAVE COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS ARE CONTAINED IN CARRIER WAVE. VISUAL AND REAL-TIME INTERACTION FOLLOWS.

“I’m sending our identification and reply.” The ship was already transcribing protocols. “It is safe to do so. That signal

can’t be coming from the galaxy ahead.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there is no encryption. More than that, the signal is in standard form. It must be coming to us from our own form of mentality.”

Drake did not need that last piece of information. The promised visual and real-time information flow was beginning, and pictures were already flowing in. The first frame was very familiar. It was Drake Merlin, staring at something right in front of him. A puzzled voice was saying, “Please transmit that identification sequence again. There appears to have been a transcription error. According to our records, you don’t exist. You haven’t existed for fifteen billion years.”

Drake was not embodied, so he could not send an exultant real-time image of himself. The best that he could do was to provide his own stored and smiling icon, as it was preserved in the ship’s memory.

“What you have received is not a transcription error. We exist, and you have the right ID sequence. We’ve been heading for home all this time. I’m sorry that it took so long.” And then, the only thing that really mattered, the question: “ Did you develop the technology needed to restore Ana? Is she there with you?”

While Drake waited for answers, he realized that everything else made sense. A rogue galaxy, devoid of life but sending out S-wave signals and filled with weapons of destruction, was a menace to every intelligence in the universe. A region around that galaxy was needed as a quarantine zone. All the approach routes had to be monitored. Like a dangerous reef in a peaceful sea, the galaxy must be surrounded by warning bells and lightships. It was a beacon for the whole universe, the best possible place for lost travelers, like Drake and the ship, to arrive at.

And arrive they had. They were on the way home.

In an infinite universe, anything that can happen will happen.

One of those things, now and again, was a little bit of luck.

With Drake’s return to human space, his problems seemed to be in the past.

The feeling of euphoria did not last. It ended when his question about Ana remained unanswered, and when the image of the other Drake Merlin vanished suddenly from the screen. It was replaced by the face of Tom Lambert. Tom’s features, hair color, and expression varied wildly for a few seconds before they stabilized.

“Unfortunately, Ana has not been resurrected.” Tom’s mouth shrank to half its size, then enlarged again. Drake had seen the effect before. Some strong emotion, fear or joy or rage, was distorting the presentation. “The problem of resurrection will be worked on.

Will be worked on, after so many aeons? Drake wondered what they had been doing all this time. What could possibly be left to do?

But Tom Lambert was continuing. “I’m sorry.” His face writhed with worry, then took on a lopsided smile. “We have not used this particular form of presentation for more than fifteen billion years. We never thought it would be necessary. A return such as yours was never anticipated, although we knew that the theory showed it to be formally possible. Now, of course, we understand exactly what happened. You and your ship remained in this universe, but you passed through a noncausal path in the caesura. Before you reemerged, you traveled seven billion light-years in space and eight billion years forward in time.”