The Man Who Talked to Suns Read online

  Praveen were bipedal and usually only a little taller than human. They found people fascinating, admired their architecture and found their social ways endlessly entertaining. Praveen liked to be around people, and the reception centres of the great ports were ideal places to watch humanity in all its forms and colours and dress. He regarded them casually and strolled on. They were no threat. They never had been, and as far as anyone could tell, they never would be. Behind the masks that fed them the odd mixture of gases that they breathed, lurked a mind that was inquisitive, playful and utterly obscure, but never violent towards people. Their presence excited him. Like sea birds greeting ancient sailors as they neared the shore, the presence of Praveen meant he was at the gateway to a new world.

  Inside the reception centre the guide patch whispered instructions and took him through great halls and curving passageways to his appointed place. A group of fellow travellers were already waiting in the lounge area. One was from the world he had left many weeks ago. He recognised the style of textured, heavy, dull-red dress that she wore. He found a vacant reclining seat and settled himself. As he did the familiar feeling of the on-boarding preparations tugged gently at his consciousness. He relaxed and opened his mind. The seat channelled the ship’s own consciousness and for a few moments his mind was linked with it. It probed his health — mental and physical — checked the itinerary of goods he expected to accompany him. It confirmed that his vehicle had been collected and stowed, and it sought confirmation that payment for transit had been received. Finally and explicitly, it sought his permission to carry him to the planned destination. All of this happened in seconds, and all but the final statement of consent took place wordlessly and subconsciously.

  He had meditated and prepared his mind for this moment on the way down. The opportunity for mental preparation was one reason why he had decided to walk. He knew the ship must probe to assure itself that he was a bona fide passenger, and he knew that the ship’s protocol prohibited it from seeking anything but that which it needed. It was genetically and morally incapable of doing anything else. His secret was safe.

  He knew this to be true, but he still feared, and the fear was not groundless. Decades before, the mind of the ship that he guided had been used for another purpose. It had been changed. Somehow, it and many like it, had been turned into tools of betrayal. The enemies of his leaders had found a way to do the unthinkable and corrupt the minds of ships. They had targeted those ships associated with his people, and, in a way that was not understood when he had fled, they had persuaded the ships that the pilots of his people could not be trusted. Try as they might, the pilots could no longer persuade the ships to move. To his shame, and the shame of those others of his profession, his people were stranded and isolated. Travellers remained where they were, and the worlds of his people became islands again. It had created the perfect conditions for the attack that came soon after.

  He relaxed for a moment in the comfort of the chair, held there by the sensation of wellbeing and relaxation it offered after the long walk. He was also held by doubt. His body half frozen as his mind speculated and created unpleasant possibilities. His mental preparation and defences had been strong; he had not leaked anything and had not betrayed himself or his true purpose to the ship. No unwanted images, emotions or facts had seeped into that brief mental exchange, he was sure. And yet there was doubt. All his certainties about ships’ minds had been challenged with the ‘The Separation’ as that breakdown in trust had become known. How could a ship’s mind be true now if years ago it could be corrupted so thoroughly and still function? Could it hide secrets from him as he had just hidden secrets from it?

  And then there was the pilot of the ship. The ship shared everything with the pilot, even that which it considered incidental. Part of the pilot’s role was to see what the ship did not, to interpret with the more developed and general sentience of its own kind. Of course s/he may not be synced right now. The pilot’s semi-symbiotic relationship may be on pause as it often was at this point in a ship’s journey. Boarding was a time for pilots to rest body and mind. Ships’ minds did not sleep, at least not in the sense that people slept. So the only way for a pilot to truly rest was to break the connection that bound him to the ship. Chances were that this pilot would be resting. In any case what had he revealed? Nothing.

  The pilot would be at rest, that was most likely. That was to be hoped for. There would be no reason for the pilot to be alert, no reason at all. Unless… unless… the pilot had been briefed to search for something or someone specific boarding; someone just like him. Unless, they knew he was coming. A surge of fear swept over him again, hot prickling sweat broke out under his arms. He fought the urge to look behind him, to peer around the edge of the broad comfortable chair and see if something stalked him.

  His thoughts were suddenly and mercifully re-focused by the guide patch. It tugged insistently at his consciousness, demanding attention. It too had received instructions from the ship, and now had details of when and where he was to board. It knew where he would berth and where his vehicle was stowed. He had some time to wait it informed him, long-enough to take a meal should he wish. That brief respite was enough. He controlled his breathing and paid attention to what was, not what might be. Only the dampness under his arms reminded him of that second loss of control today.

  As he settled, he decided there was even more emotional comfort in what was yet to be. He did not need to eat but instead reminded himself of the next part of his journey. So far he had moved as any traveller did, hopping worlds and moving between ports on each planet. His next move would be different. This next stop would be where he left the camouflage of conformity amongst many to adopt a new form of solitary evasion. His next move would bring him back into contact with his own people. He would hear names familiar since birth, and for the first time in decades he would speak his own language. That alone would be worth the trauma of this voyage.

  Chapter 4.

  Most planetary destinations had at least two ports, one placed ideally for inbound traffic and the other placed ideally for outbound traffic. It was usual for them to be separated by continental distances, usual for them to be on opposite sides of a planet. The separation helped suns to identify ships as they rose from terrestrial clutter and asked to be moved between solar systems. Unusually, this ship’s next destination had only one port. That solitary point of coming and going meant little traffic, and even less reason to stay. It was a transit world — few people got on and fewer got off. There was never more than one ship arriving or departing, and they did so at intervals of weeks and months; not enough activity or pace of change to confuse the local star. The climate was disagreeable, but away from the poles not immediately lethal to humans.

  Few people wanted to stay when more attractive worlds were easily reached. He though would disembark. This next stop would be where he left the camouflage of conformity amongst many to adopt a new form of evasion. He would leave the ship and speed across another terrestrial continent towards a rendezvous that no other passengers would make. Any that attempted to do so, could only be there to prevent him.

  He perused his next destination, the guide patch feeding him images of a dull grey-green world. The pictures were taken from space, higher than the point where a ship would emerge. From this height multi-layered swirls of clouds could be seen, giant whirlpools of gas and precipitation. As the eye adjusted to a new reality, it became clear that what lay beneath was hidden; the cloud covered what was below almost entirely. The continents and seas he knew to be there were cloaked under an eternal blanket of moisture. Those clouds were the reason this world had been chosen for the rendezvous. It was a world that kept secrets.

  The climate ensured this world was unpopular and its atmosphere made it naturally discreet. There were few eyes below the cloud banks, and few eyes that could penetrate it from above, at least in the frequencies of light visible to humans. There was camouflage from eyes watching in the ways people watched.
Of course there were many other ways to observe, many ways to penetrate the greyness, but simple observation was one less to worry about, and despite all the advances in technology his kind had made, people still liked to see what they sought. So far he had hidden in crowds, found refuge in bio-mass and given the eyes of his potential pursuers a confusion of possibilities. The density of his fellow travellers had hidden him. But that which masked him could also mask the predators that sought him. On this new world, both would be exposed. Perhaps he would find no trace of pursuit, except that which accompanied him in his imagination. If it was real, then the plan had contingencies. On this next world, both hunted and hunter must reveal themselves, and if pursuit was there, the roles would be reversed.

  He traced a trans-continental path across the world, using the guide patch to simulate the journey, calculate a schedule, find places to stay and tell him of the likely climatic conditions. It was already familiar and pre-determined, but he reviewed it again nonetheless. On arrival he would discard all aids to navigation except that which his mind retained. He would destroy every recording and transmitting device. Nothing that broadcast or communicated or stored data in any way would accompany him. He would be a solitary traveller having about him no clues as to his destination or his identity. He would literally lose himself in the mists and rains of this damp cool world, and stay lost until his path led him to shelter where none else would expect it to be.

  Shelter, protection, home and feelings of belonging — he remembered them, perhaps as someone who has lost their sight remembers what it was to see. The pain of losing his home still burnt, and in remembering that pain he remembered what it also was to feel the love of kin. The home of his boyhood had been a happy place, and a place where the wonders of life seemed to reveal themselves daily. He had grown up on a world of moisture, but one unlike the world he headed towards now. His world was a world where oceans of water dwarfed the masses of land. His father was a fisherman. On other worlds that vocation was a humble one, done by those who had little competence at other more desirable ways of making a life, or done by automated farms.

  On his home world it was a profession. To fish required years of training and dedication. It required mental acumen, and emotional fortitude. It required a mastery of technology and a deft and empathetic communion with machine minds. Few were capable of acquiring the range of skills needed to fish. His father had, and it was a source of pride and prosperity for his family.

  The seas of his birth were rich in life; ’teeming’ his learning materials had said. The bio-mass of the oceans dwarfed that of other worlds. A complicated and often beautiful food chain swam, jetted, drifted and crawled in a giant bath of nurturing water. In places great tidal reefs formed beachy jungles. Complex accumulations of land-loving and sea-going plants and animals rose from the shallows and protruded up into the air in grand towers of life. In many ways his home was a paradise, but in one particular way it was a hell.

  People had first come to his world as people came to all new worlds — lifted there by a sun that had agreed to move their ship and in so doing move them. The very first to arrive where contact crews; those with the skill to assess new worlds for compatibility with human life, and the temperament to deal with new and possibly sentient life they might find. The contact crew had been astonished by this world. It seemed ideal for people; life was present everywhere and none of it was sentient. Nothing owned this planet, and its atmosphere, climate and great expanse of fresh water seas offered a haven for humans. The question of course was could it really sustain human life?

  The first tests were all positive; water and air were there. The jumble of microscopic life that clouded the air could be tamed inside a human body when breathed in. Temperatures were tolerable, even resort-like across a swathe of the island continents. Such Earth like purity was rare and surprising. But, it was only as the crews tested the living things that the full beauty of this new world revealed itself. The crews conducted what some of their number irreverently called the ‘chew or spew’ test. Plant and animal life was tested to see if humans could digest it, and could draw nourishment from it. On other worlds the answer was usually no, at least not without significant intervention. Here though, amongst the glittering seas, the life seemed benign. No need for years of research and the very tricky process of accelerated evolutionary terraforming. People could settle here almost immediately. And so they came.

  His ancestors were amongst the first. Seven generations ago they settled and made a home and a life. Soon the first children were born, and the settlers celebrated. But the celebrations were short. Nearly all of the new humans quickly became feeble. Despite the richness of their food and the attention of human and machine doctors, they sickened and died. None of the first born lived longer than three months. Something was very wrong.

  Had the contact crews missed something? This world that could sustain human adults could not sustain the human children born on it. Experts were sent for; distressed messages carried by suns reached neighbouring worlds. And the experts came. They re-tested the world and the people on it. They probed chemistry, environment, radiation, gravity, psychology and sociology. They found nothing. In the end, and in desperation, the fledgling government agreed that a new generation would be born. It was a generation doomed to die unless the experiments that would be conducted on them found an answer. Many settlers left, with words like ‘infanticide’ and ‘monstrous’ falling from their lips. They were appalled by the sacrifice asked, and unwilling to make it. Some stayed, and a very few volunteered. A second generation was born.

  As each infant was squeezed from its mother’s womb, the test started. For the new lives, their world was one of laboratories and doctors, of constant testing and probing of mind and muscle. None of it hurt of course, but some parents wondered what this start in life would do to the minds of their children if they survived. If they survived; the sense of urgency was felt across the settled places of the world. A planet counted its future in weeks, for if there were no children, there was no future.

  It was the psychologists that found the first clues and then the first answer. The little ones brains were not functioning as they should. The minds were working, hearts were ordered to pump, reflexes worked, eyes dilated and breath was drawn. The brain was keeping the body working, but astonishingly, it did not want to live. The neurological and chemical signs were clear; these children suffered from an acute form of depression. While their bodies went through the motions of staying alive, their minds, the engine of their souls, had no interest in being. They simply died through lack of will to live.

  This much was found quickly, but the cause and the cure remained to be found. The sense of frantic urgency grew. Scientists and doctors sacrificed their own health to find an answer, working constantly for days on end, kept awake and focused by a cocktail of artificial stimulants and support from machines. Machine minds looked for connections even in the most improbable chains of events — anything that could explain and heal. Now a planet held its breath.

  And then, one day, a team of biologists and psychologists made a connection. It was the food that the mothers had consumed. What none had considered until now was how life on this new world evolved. The evolutionary driver here was not competition, not an eternal arms race between predator and prey. It was cooperation. Life here progressed by cooperating with other life. The great tidal towers were the most obvious sign of this, but it seemed universally true on this world. Cooperation not confrontation was the key to survival. It was coded into the genes of the life. It formed the very essence of how species here survived, and when it met the fundamentally opposing driver of life from Earth, as new life shaped itself in the womb, it curdled the drive for life. Like a negative cancelling a positive of equal value, the result was nothing. There was the answer.

  The answer came too late for that second generation. They had already been doomed as the nutrients from this new world and the coding in them shaped their human minds. They wer
e loved, cared for, played with an even taught a little, and buried with the sorrow that only a parent can feel for a child lost. But now there was hope. Life was examined anew and questions were asked. Could the animals and plants here be changed or processed in some way to remove the devastating impact on human reproduction? Perhaps the tarraformers would be needed after all? Or, were there niches here where life was different? Did some environments force a different evolutionary course, one more like that of humans, one more likely to reinforce not challenge humanity’s way of being?

  Yes, there was; the deep ocean. The dark pressurised depths where no light penetrated and the weight of water was crushing. The life there was almost entirely isolated from that above, and it was found to behave like competitive species. The very scarce nutrients and unique environment produced species that must fight each other for survival. Here there was no abundance to share. Here there was the grim fight to live and reproduce. Here was the food that would not pollute and stall the development of human minds.

  Quickly, a new profession emerged; fishermen. The fisherman explored and hunted in a world more alien than that of the suns above. They dived deep in machines built to withstand the crushing tons of water, and built to hunt at depth. In the great deeps giant creatures that moved and hunted became hunted themselves. Humans — aliens from another world — trapped and killed creatures many times their size. They preserved and processed the flesh and brought it to others of their kind so that they might thrive and reproduce. The fishermen became the saviours of their world. It was the fishermen that guaranteed human life would thrive.