InterstellarNet 03 Enigma Read online

  “Nothing so straightforward,” Ene said, “but you are essentially correct.”

  “And do all your ships—”

  “But why?” Carl interrupted. (“Yes, I’m changing the subject,” he netted to Joshua. “We want to learn about their capabilities, but without showing interest.”) “Let’s suppose I believe the Xool could take a time-out from the rest of the galaxy. Why would you?”

  “From an abundance of caution,” Ene said. “We knew that we lived on an unexceptional planet orbiting an unexceptional star, at the outskirts of one galaxy among billions. That our species should be unique was implausible—and yet the silence of the sky suggested we were alone. We needed to know: was our situation, somehow, exceptional, or was catastrophe in our future? Because our best minds foresaw in emerging technologies all too many pathways to our own extinction.”

  “Nuclear war?” Carl asked.

  “As one among the possibilities,” Ene said.

  A Xool approached carrying a tray with a carafe and three stemmed goblets. Condensation beaded the carafe; drips zigzagged down its side. He set the tray on an unoccupied ottoman, waggled his fringes as though gesturing, and departed.

  “Ice water,” Ene explained, decanting some for Carl and Joshua, and more for himself, with deliberation and precise motions suggestive of a Japanese tea ritual. Guiding a goblet beneath the ragged band of fringe, Ene offered them a glimpse of vertical lips and massive, many-cusped teeth.

  Even after Ene downed half his serving, Joshua left his own goblet, untouched, sitting on the ottoman. Carl did, too. It seemed unlikely Ene would try to drug them, and less likely still that Blue Moon would stock human-specific drugs that their nanites wouldn’t handle, but why take the chance? If they got thirsty, helmet reservoirs would suffice.

  Votan, whom Tacitus had left poking into the computer console at the Xool telescope, chose that moment to call. Entrusting Ene’s recitation to Joshua and implant memory, Tacitus accepted the link. In clan speak, he netted, “What news, Votan?”

  “Preliminary analysis of log file complete. Its composition: run-time trace of program execution. Its consequence: determination of Xool computer instruction set.”

  Tacitus detected a touch of gloating in Votan’s report. In hours, she had cracked a problem that had thwarted him for three decades. Of course in all those years, he had had only a random memory dump. She had a physical Xool computer to examine, and with it an execution trace to match against known activity, and all the analytical tools he had coded over the years against just such an opportunity as this.

  “Upload of sample?” Tacitus requested.

  The technician netted over two files: raw data from the run-time trace and an annotated version. Beyond determining the Xool computer’s instruction set, she had also made a healthy start toward reverse engineering its operating-system protocols.

  Here and there, scanning the files, Tacitus encountered instruction sequences that must invoke networking services. Evidently, the observatory computer was cabled into the Xool base. That was hardly surprising.

  An intrusion alarm seemed like the sort of thing that might interrupt Ene’s recitation. Had Votan resisted the temptation to probe the Xool network—or had she broken in, unobserved?

  “Level of security?” Tacitus asked.

  “Defenses laughable, as from the dawn of computing. No biometrics and only 256-bit encryption of passwords. No effective intrusion detection. No AI or even elementary heuristics for virus discovery, just pattern matching. Software-only firewall, with the same vulnerabilities as the operating system. For all of it, implementation amateurish and open to hack.”

  Amateurish? Perhaps. More likely, all Xool programming was typical of early-stage computing. The mystery remained why, having options, the Xool hadn’t upgraded their primitive technology. Grace and Helena could have equipped the Xool lunar base with decent computer gear. Ene, or one like him, must have prohibited all but a low-end pocket comp.

  Or, microseconds of contemplation suggested, not a mystery. Add imported tech to the mix, and then what? Such meager defenses as Votan had described would never see coming—and could not cope with, if they did—modern adaptive, learning malware.

  On occasion modern did not denote progress.

  “Further analysis,” Tacitus directed Votan. “With utmost discretion. Also derivation of Xool network map, if possible.”

  “Tacitus,” Carl’s avatar interrupted. “Are we getting anything new here? I sense Ene is stalling us.”

  Tacitus scanned recent memories. If Ene could be believed, the Xool might well have explored the galaxy. Sublight speeds were no obstacle—if the crew, in time-slowing modules, ceased to experience the passage of time. If the Xool populace, in their world-encasing field, opted out of the passing ages.

  Two very large ifs.

  “New information, yes,” he netted. “Amid much repetition and circumlocution, to be sure. Despite speaking fluent English, Ene may not reason like us. Maybe he is stalling, but Xool—or just Ene—might favor giving many examples. He could simply be wordy or nervous. He might be required to consult often with his non-English-speaking colleagues.

  “But you might find this interesting,” and Tacitus gave a quick summary on Votan’s probing of the observatory’s computer.

  “Keep me posted on her progress,” Carl netted. “But don’t let Votan try anything that might reveal her probing.”

  Reclaiming shared vocal cords, Tacitus broke into the saga about the era of Xool exploration. “A few million years were ample to search the galaxy. Whatever you found”—and Tacitus was beginning to have his suspicions—“caused you to initiate another project. So: what did you conclude?”

  An eyestalk pivoted toward Joshua/Tacitus. “Intelligent species arise. Not often, but it does happen. Across the galaxy and the ages, we’ve encountered scarcely a hundred examples. They developed technology. And then … they self destructed.”

  “From computer technology run amok,” Tacitus said. “That’s what you feared. That’s why Xool use only the most elementary computing, little more than number crunching.” And why your computer technology is so static.

  “Once a society collapses,” Ene said, “it is difficult to ascertain root causes. The evidence falls prey to rust and decay, to weathering and willful destruction. And after collapse begins, who knows? Transportation networks might fail and, if endless listening to your broadcasts properly instructed me in your idioms, for the want of a nail, a civilization is lost. Production of all kinds might stop. Any disruption might leave a civilization without the energy to produce the energy with which to sustain itself.”

  “That’s your big lesson?” Carl said bitterly. “Things may break, so don’t use tech? Obviously, you don’t believe that. You control time and gravity. You have a fleet of starships. And anyway, what the hell does any of this have to do with plunging InterstellarNet worlds into slow time?”

  Eyestalk twitching, in the mannerism that, by correlation and inference, Tacitus had concluded denoted fear or dismay. The most agitated so far, Joshua decided.

  “There is more,” Ene said, recovering. “After enough archeology and painstaking reconstructions, a pattern emerged. Amid the ruins, across every fallen civilization, we never once glimpsed technology advanced much beyond our own. The warnings of our brightest minds, and of our worst nightmares, seemed prescient. We stood—no, we yet stand—on the brink of self destruction.

  “Once, in all our explorations, we almost witnessed the crisis. If we could have seen what went wrong, maybe we would have learned what, precisely, to avoid. But the galaxy is a big place, the emergence of intelligence rare, and the works of civilization ephemeral. We might search for eons and never find ourselves in the right place at the right time.”

  Carl tipped his head, considering. “It wouldn’t be just one thing, would it?”

  “We supposed not,” Ene agreed. “As our explorations continued, we knew not. We came upon worlds that had been,
for the lack of a better word, devoured, their surfaces become some seething, homogeneous mass. Any probe sent to such worlds was eaten, too.”

  “Gray goo,” Carl said. “Nanotech failure.”

  “Or nanotech warfare.” This time, Ene’s eyestalks retracted by almost their entire length before, gradually, returning to their usual extension. “On other worlds impossibly vibrant, primitive life choked the ruins of vanished civilizations. Our biologists had had recent progress in genetics, deciphering a mechanism akin to your DNA. Almost certainly, on these worlds genetic engineering had slipped out of control. Yet elsewhere we encountered worlds populated by robots, devoid of life beyond the microbial. Eeriest of all”—that characterization punctuated with yet more eyestalk tremors—“was the planet we found … abandoned. Vacant buildings and unattended fields. In the cities, weeds just beginning to encroach. Nowhere, any sign of violence. Nowhere, bodies. Nowhere, answers of any kind.”

  “You were there?” Carl asked.

  “I took part in several expeditions,” Ene said. “Yes, I saw that deserted world.”

  “Had they transcended to some higher plane of existence?” Carl asked. “Become something beyond our understanding?”

  “That is the concept from your literature.” The twitching grew more agitated than ever. As though involuntarily, eyes swiveled to stare at Joshua/Tacitus. “Or, perhaps, newly suicided.”

  A nanotech plague more discriminate than gray goo, Tacitus guessed. One that devoured only animal life—at which idea, it was Joshua who twitched.

  “So technology not much different than Xool level looked dangerous,” Carl summarized. “What does that have to do with us?”

  “Altogether too much,” Joshua said, “Ene means technology little different from InterstellarNet standards.”

  CHAPTER 53

  It was, to borrow a favored phrase of Corinne’s, like drinking from a fire hose.

  No, Carl decided, worse. To steal sips from the revelatory flood did not begin to suffice. Somehow, he had to take in everything. Somehow, he had to put all this knowledge to good use. The Xool, notwithstanding Ene’s loquacity, were not friends to humanity or Hunters or anyone else.

  Carl uploaded another status update, ending, “I can’t help but believe we’re being stalled.”

  Aboard Excalibur, Motar still had the conn. It only seemed as if they had been inside the Xool base for days. Motar asked, “Stall? For what purpose?”

  “I don’t know,” Carl admitted. Since he had left Excalibur, on Xool World less than the blink of an eye had passed—assuming Ene’s tale were true. “What’s happening on your end?”

  “Hi-res mapping of Blue Moon, compiled as we get imagery from orbiting drones. More craters too small to form central peaks nonetheless have them. We’ve spotted nine fakes so far, in a narrow band along Blue Moon’s equator, more or less evenly spaced.”

  “Corresponding to other underground bases?”

  “Unclear,” Motar netted. “The nearby fake peak is by far the largest, and it’s the only one near a lava-tube opening. I’d like to land Durendal to inspect another.”

  The suggestion made perfect sense, but a second ship on the ground, vulnerable, made Carl uneasy.

  “If you haven’t figured out the anomalies once the survey is complete, ask me again. Stay alert. Make certain Task Force Mashkith”—the three surviving ships of it—is ready for action.”

  “Will do. Excalibur, out.”

  “One more thing.” Carl summarized the effort, begun at Joshua’s request, to penetrate the Xool observatory’s computer. “Keep watch on that, too.”

  “I’ve already heard from Votan. She has identified many of the Xool operating-system functions and feels she’ll be able to compromise it. Once she has attack code to load, she proposes to force a reboot.”

  “No!” Carl directed. “Absolutely not. Do not allow her to do anything the Xool might notice.”

  “Not to worry.” Motar’s avatar licked his lips. “That’s what I told her.”

  “Good call. Contact team, out.”

  “Excalibur, out.”

  What else, meanwhile, amid his circumlocutions, had Ene revealed? What did the rising Xool chatter in the back rooms signify? “What’d I miss?” he netted Joshua/Tacitus. “The short version.”

  A piercing, mind’s-ear tone preempted any response. The moment the alarm stopped, Motar netted, “The inner moons are gone, somehow replaced by fleets. And they’re headed—”

  Carl’s radio link to Excalibur went dead.

  • • • •

  It had been a stall.

  “What’s going on?” Carl demanded.

  Ene ignored him as three Xool rushed into the room. Their belts held holsters.

  “Ir still can’t translate.” Joshua netted as the Xool spoke. That the two of them could still net meant they weren’t being jammed, at least not inside the base. What had severed the link to the outside? “What do you think is happening?”

  “You got Motar’s alert, I guess.”

  “Ir did.”

  What did he think? He did not have much to go on. As Carl tried to wrap his brain around moons morphing into fleets, the room trembled. It wasn’t one continuous event, either, but several distinct shocks.

  How likely was a meteor shower just as two moons pulled their magic trick and his comm cut out? Not very. Especially meteoroids large enough to shake the floor a good thirty meters belowground. Ship launches or missile strikes seemed far more probable.

  Reflexively, he tried to reach Motar and Excalibur. Still nothing.

  Too late, Carl deduced what hid in those sham peaks. He netted, “There are disguised facilities all around this moon. Sensor clusters. Eyes for defensive systems.”

  Because when you’re masking your very presence, you don’t deploy satellites.

  Carl took a step toward the Xool. “Why attack us? We’ve done nothing but talk.”

  “Be silent,” Ene said. “You should not have come.”

  Not believing it, Carl told himself one of those shocks had been Excalibur getting away. Motar would not sit still to get pounded, would never go down without a fight. Not the way he played b’tok.

  “End this while you still can,” Carl said.

  With perfect timing, the room shuddered. Dust rained from the ceiling. From places deeper within the base Carl heard the yowling of Xool, and thuds, and a din like glass shattering and fabric ripping.

  Joshua said, “Way to go, Excalibur.”

  At Ene’s rasped command, two Xool unholstered their weapons. In English, he ordered, “Silence, both of you. Hands together.”

  Joshua held out his arms so that a Xool could slip something like plasticuffs around his wrists. When Carl’s turn came to be bound, the grazing touch of a tentacle against his skin felt hot and gecko-pad sticky.

  “You don’t want to do this,” Carl said. The Xool attending to him (call him Red Circle, for the insignia on his belt) gave the cuffs a final yank. The strap bit into Carl’s arms. “We don’t need to be enemies.”

  “You may speak when spoken to,” Ene snapped.

  “Our turn to be reverent?” Joshua netted.

  “Not going to happen,” Carl netted. He tried a different tack with Ene. “Halt the attacks, or battle bots will tear this place apart.”

  The base shook again. In the control room, two display units leapt off the wall and shattered on the floor.

  “I doubt it.” Ene said. “The lava-tube opening through which you entered is now deep in slow time.”

  Inaccessible, and with the robots trapped inside. There’s where the comm link had failed.

  Carl said, “Call off the attack, Ene. We’ve done nothing to harm you.”

  “Your presence here is unacceptable.”

  “Uninvited,” Carl said, “nothing more.”

  “Unacceptable,” Ene repeated.

  Joshua netted, “Why are we still alive?”

  “He’s not done talking with us,” Ca
rl netted.

  From here on out, the conversation was apt to be unpleasant. It was as obvious as why Ene had permitted the two of them into the base: hoping to keep Task Force Mashkith sidelined until the Xool attack.

  The floor trembled again. Battle debris or errant missiles?

  “Why haven’t they wrapped themselves in slow time?” Joshua netted. “Save themselves from attack?”

  Because they can’t, Carl decided. This facility was the Xool command-and-control center. Without it, they couldn’t wage the battle already underway.

  “You’re in deep shit, Ene,” Carl declared.

  Then he was on the floor, his ears ringing. His upper lip was split and his nose askew. The tang of copper filled his mouth. Red Circle loomed over him, arm-tentacle raised for another blow. The weapon in his coiled grasp dripped crimson. At Ene’s command, with one last threatening gesture, Red Circle backed off.

  I’m way too old for this, Carl thought.

  Ene said, “Enough impudence. I know your capabilities. The ships chased away could not have brought you to this star. Where is your primary vessel?”

  Carl sat up and spat blood. He gestured with bound hands at the nearest pile of debris. “Chased? I don’t think so.”

  “The starship,” Ene repeated. “Where is it?”

  Carl ignored the question. “The two close moons, wrapped, like the planet, in slow time? They weren’t moons. Had I thought about their negligible mass, I’d have understood sooner. You needed fleets ready to defend the planet if anyone showed up. Their crews could no more wait out eons in real time than you, or the Xool below on the planet. So the fleets stayed in orbit, wrapped in slow time, oblivious to events. And if anything should take down your primitive computers ….”

  As though on cue, lights flickered. The floor rippled. A shockwave lifted Carl, Joshua, and every Xool in sight, sending everyone flying.

  Carl bounced off a wall and twice off the floor, bruised from head to toe, before tumbling to a stop. Nothing felt broken. Sitting up, he nixed the painkillers his med nanites had already started to synth. This was no time for drug-dulled thoughts.