On the twenty-third day since launch, ship's time, Henderson was watching the micromachines construct the tiny dormitory inside the terrarium when his signal chimed through his music. He waved down Beetleburt 2.1.6's Theme for the Common Machine and said, "Yes, Papa?"
"It's time for Fisher's first show, the 'dragon meeting' as he's calling it. He wants everyone there."
"Oh, right," Henderson replied, rising from his chairbeast. This promised to be a dreary, tiresome affair, but he supposed there'd be some duties on this little jaunt. It seemed unfair to him to have to work hard in addition to the sacrifice this trip already represented. Still, he supposed the time requested was not burdensome, and he might even contribute some ideas if it wasn't too boring. He would have felt better about it Fisher had come around to consult him more, but after their initial discussion they had not talked of the star dragon again. Well, this was the time for more discussion, was it not? The construction of his pet project was fully automated at this stage and would proceed well without his supervision.
Hmm, he thought, Sylvia would be there.
He paused in the yawning orifice leading to the biological laboratory, turned, and went back inside. He checked his face in a mirror, slicking down his eyebrows with a wetted fingertip, donned his scaled jacket, and poured himself a glass of wine. No telling how long Fisher might drone on.
Henderson was the last to arrive at the conference room, fashionably late. Everyone else, arrayed haphazardly around the polished cherrywood tabletree, glanced at him. He paused in the entryway to flash them a perfect smile. The remaining empty chairbeast unfortunately was not next to Sylvia, but at least it was across from her. Too bad she looked as if she'd just rushed in from a nap without freshening up.
"Now that we're finally all here," Fisher began. "The Biolathe corporate brain provided us with a mission prospectus, with prioritized goals and guidelines for reaching those goals. Given the scanty information available, it was understood that much additional planning would have to be done en route and at SS Cygni as data became available. I trust that everyone has downloaded the Biolathe document."
Henderson had, although he hadn't done more than skim the abstract. Aside from the section on biological speculation, it had been utterly boring. At least he was paying attention now, however, which was the polite thing to do. He sipped his wine. The heathen Stearn was building a pyramid from drug ampoules filled with some sparkly amber liquid. Fisher and Fang were letting it slide, and Henderson would not permit himself to notice such behavior.
"I consider some of the ideas very good," Fisher continued, "I don't consider all the ideas so good. It isn't surprising given the relatively short time the brain had to assemble the document, coupled with our great ignorance. First, we should see if we can agree on our prioritized goals."
Fisher stood up and activated his right hand's computer interface. Words appeared on the pads on the tabletree in front of everyone:
PHYSICAL GOALS
Return Living Specimen to Earth.
Return Dead Specimen to Earth.
Return Specimen Samples to Earth.
Return Specimen Data to Earth.
"This appears self-evident," Fang said.
"Of course it does, but there are underlying assumptions regarding the prioritization that I'd like to question. But these are all questions of 'what,' rather than the more important goals of 'why.' Let me address this by writing down some the scientific goals."
Henderson swirled his wine around in its glass before looking at the next set:
SCIENTIFIC GOALS
Physics of Specimen -- Biological fusion? How does it survive in the hot disk?
Origin of Specimen -- natural or artificial?
Purpose of Specimen -- natural or ???
"That last one was not in the prospectus, but I think it is important," Fisher said.
"What do you mean by 'Purpose?'" Devereaux asked.
"Based on the previous goal, it's obvious," said Henderson, trying to catch her eye. He had given his brief conversation with Fisher some idle thought and didn't mind showing off for the available female. "If the dragon isn't of a natural origin, but of artificial, it was created. Created for a purpose."
Fang said, "I will agree that determining the dragon origin is important. This must be a question of how to achieve self-organization in an extreme high-energy environment. Does anyone here truly think that someone, perhaps the infamous little gray men, made star dragons and put them in SS Cygni?"
"It is hard to believe that we would not have already discovered physical artifacts of alien intelligence before these star dragons if such exists locally in the Milky Way," Devereaux said.
"Not at all," Henderson said, engaging her. "Biological systems are self-renewing, and can evolve in response to cataclysm -- and this is a cataclysmic variable, after all. A biological remnant is more durable than a physical remnant."
"What I'm getting at," said Fisher, thumping a fist into his palm several times, "is that if someone showed up and kidnapped one of our drone ships, just out of curiosity mind you, we would probably consider it an act of aggression, if not outright war."
"You make an interesting point," said Devereaux, squinting at Fisher and wrinkling her face in a disagreeable way. "After all, the official Biolathe agenda is to use these dragons, or at least biology based on the dragons, to design machines for stellar engineering. If they are an alien construction team, and we show up and disrupt their production schedule, then someone might get upset."
"Someone," chimed in Stearn, grinning, "Or something."
"I cannot believe we are starting with this remote possibility," Fang said. "This dragon is an animal that happens to live in an exotic environment. An animal for us to hunt and use, if we can catch it. That's a fundamental rule of nature." Her face remained passive, but Fang's knuckles whitened where she gripped the edge of the tabletree.
"You're probably correct, Captain," Henderson said, trying to ingratiate himself with Fang. She would evaluate him, after all, for bonuses. "We can test the notion that it is simply, as you put it, an animal that lives in an exotic environment. As I was telling Dr. Fisher earlier, evidence for an ecosystem would support a natural origin for the star dragon. Certainly transitional forms are necessary in an evolutionary scenario and would lead to the exploitation of a variety of niches."
"I agree," Fisher said, holding his palm out toward Henderson. "But only to a point. I know of two places where that does not hold strictly true, but only in a locality. One is an island on Terenga where there is a creature called Grizzle's Omnivore, sort of a superpredator, which has eaten everything else, and I mean everything. Got poor old Grizzle, too, before they'd figured out he wasn't digestible and gave them all the runs. The current breed on the island soak up the sun during the day in perfect harmony. By night they prey on each other in loose packs."
"Yes, I've heard of those," Henderson said, "but surely they're dying out. Solar energy would not be a sufficient input to keep them going, would it?"
"You'd think that, but they have a truly ingenious -- "
"Back to the subject at hand," Fang said, sitting back on her chairbeast and crossing her arms. She looked cool, perfect, and dangerous in her crisp white uniform. Henderson had kept tabs on Fisher and Fang, and knew they were already sleeping together. He considered Fisher a brave man to bed the captain. She continued, "If you think this is such an issue, Sam, how do you propose to modify our approach?"
"As I said at the outset, there are some very good ideas in the prospectus. I agree that the dragon appears to use electromagnetic fields to move through the disk, and I expect to have a working model of those fields before we arrive. That gives us an advantage. Just as a pinched magnetic field like Earth's magnetosphere can trap an electron, forcing it to spiral back and forth until dumped down into the aurora, we can use the Karamojo's field to trap a dragon. Stearn, what do you think about the plasma pen Biolathe proposed?"
Stearn's wings perked up as he looked up from transforming his amber pyramid into some kind of fractal pattern to which Devereaux, sitting next to him, was paying too much attention. The Jack said, "Geometry is a little problematic, but I think we can do it. Can't we Papa?"
"We can rig a good strong cage," said Papa.
"But what of the reprioritization you spoke of," Fang persisted.
"Right," Fisher said, holding up a finger. "Let's make data gathering first priority, and let's get it gathered before we move on to any other goals. It can make a difference."
Henderson said, "Yes, we do a detailed analysis of the system, look for evidence for an ecosystem. Upon finding it, we proceed to procure specimens of all the niches. If there is no ecosystem, we should have a fall-back plan, and not the one currently outlined."
"And what is wrong with the Biolathe plan?" Fang wanted to know.
"You don't know what's wrong with nuclear 'depth charges'?" Sylvia asked, an attractive throaty indignation in her voice.
"If we cannot coerce a dragon into Papa's cage voluntarily, such a shock wave will likely be the safest course to neutralize one from a distance," Fang said. "We cannot fly into the disk. We will be fishermen with no knowledge of lures in a very big sea."
Stearn asked, "Those bomb buggers really affect the disk? I mean, it's a giant disk of fire! Hmm, okay, I can figure it out. Plasma temperature in outer disk is like the solar photosphere right?"
"Yes, the plasma in the outer disk in quiescence is like that in the sun's photosphere, several thousand degrees Kelvin, not all that hot and not all that dense," Devereaux offered. "For the nuclears we get temperatures of tens of millions of Kelvins and an energy density many orders of magnitude higher. They'll make a splash all right. Hundreds of kilometers at least."
"Still seems to me like a star or an accretion disk ought to swallow man-made bombs without a burp," Stearn said, ruffling his feathers.
"Globally yes, locally, no," said Devereaux.
"Yes, well," Fisher said, "I suggest we employ heroic measures to secure a live specimen before resorting to such a thing."
"Yes, heroic measures," Fang said, apparently mollified. "In my opinion, bombing is the practical approach. A few dead dragons are worth a live one, are they not? A live one will probably be a hundred times more difficult to capture, and would perhaps require additional heroic measures to keep alive for the trip home. We should maximize our chances for success, and minimize our risks. Yes?"
Opposite Fang, Fisher frowned back. Trouble in paradise? "Kill one of those magnificent creatures, just because it would be easier? We're not doing this, traveling two hundred and fifty light years, because it is practical. We're going to do this right. We should invest some effort in developing methods of luring a dragon to us. Agreed?"
Fang stared at Fisher, finally saying, "Agreed." The word came out quickly, like a fencing thrust.
Then Fisher let the discussion devolve into the details. Apparently this first meeting was supposed to be more of a free-form brainstorming, a chance to see where everyone stood in terms of their philosophical approach to what Biolathe had suggested. Henderson didn't really see the point. Fisher and Fang were the players here, and before this meeting he had thought they were getting along famously.
As Henderson watched the dichotomy of Fisher's animated hands versus Fang's unreadable glare, he became concerned about the fortunes of the mission. But then there came an even worse omen as the meeting broke up and Devereaux left with Stearn. What could she possibly see in him?
Chapter 4
The ship, a fragment detached from the earth, went on lonely and swift like a small planet. -- Joseph Conrad
He peers into every part of the Karamojo, listens to the breath of the air scrubbers along every corridor, feels the weight and temperature of every creature on the ship. It is more than this as well. He sings the harmony produced by the electromagnetic field, the flywheels, and the singularity pair when all are in alignment and pointed like an arrow toward the dwarf nova system SS Cygni. The metallorganics that fuse DNA with semiconductor and comprise his brain have few nerves of their own. This harmonic tone is his good, for he is the mission. He is the ship. He is a world.
He is Papa.
Or rather Papa is the self-aware personality of the ship's brain, designed to interact more effectively with the human crew. Papa's hind brain records all that transpires aboard, adjusts the song that is flight under wormdrive, and for it there is no time except in the derivatives in the differential equations governing its feedback control systems.
Papa himself thinks in the fuzzy, linear way of humans, with a specific location and point of view, and in terms of personal relationships. He has memory, both ones false, he knows, of a shadowy lifetime in the Twentieth century, more facts than sensory detail, such as running with the bulls at Pamplona and the plane crashes in Africa; and ones real, as a starship captained by Fang, of hauling faux-bulls and more to a tiny world nestled next to the dim ember of Barnard's star. He has a sense of movement into the future that the hind brain lacks. To the ship he provides the purpose of the mission, the creativity to enhance self-preservation.
In these first weeks of his new life, the SS Cygni mission, Papa walks the corridors of himself, a ghost capable of movement through walls and transportation anywhere shipboard at lightspeed.
He learns the secrets of the people on board, and fights between his Hemingway-derived personality which ever judges those around himself and finds them wanting, and the programmed overrides preventing him from actions suggested by his judgment that make him a good tool.
Papa lurks in the console of Axelrod Henderson. Henderson is more than competent and the biosystems operate at near optimum levels, guided by a trained human eye that notices subtle discoloration and patterns before reaching the conservative sigma levels required for action by his own algorithms. Henderson spends long hours subtly redesigning his own body and face, led by statistics governing mate selection. He runs additional models to determine the fraction of the human population carrying his genes upon his return; apparently Henderson has banked his sperm and licensed extensive cloning rights. What makes the faux-human part of Papa fume is the elaborate plan that Henderson will finance with the windfall from this very mission. Henderson develops his plan with all the attention to detail of any gourmet pornographic implant: the delivery of a virus carrying his own genes that will simultaneously impregnate every woman on Earth -- or at least some suitable and less-policed starter planet in the colonies. Henderson polishes computer-generated models of this scenario every night. He writes:
It is pretentious to rise above what flesh this universe has wrought. What folly it is to think of a higher purpose, and to think that purpose any more than what we have instilled in every fiber of our being already. I recognize what I am, and I will fulfill my purpose....
Papa wants to grow a muscle-bound mobile, shout, "Lousy jerk, we'll knock your mucking block off!" and pugilistically educate the snooty underhanded biosystems technician into proper citizenship. He isn't permitted. But it would be a fine thing to end a bad business before it has begun. He is also not permitted to tell anyone else of this discovery, even if it ever appears that Henderson has formulated a way to carry out his plan. Damn privacy rights are coded right into him. Papa takes some consolation in the fact that the women on board the Karamojo don't share Henderson's bed, although he does worry that despite their hormonal implants they will, impossibly, become pregnant.
Almost as shocking to Papa is the liaison Stearn and Devereaux have formed. This lush, chocolate-brown beauty -- not his type, but rich and womanly nonetheless -- has shacked up with the Jack who is more boy than man. Many times over these weeks as the ghost slips through the door into Stearn's quarters, which now wears the appearance of a traditional English library, he discovers the pair of them embroiled in ancient board games. First chess, clothes vanishing with each capture, later go, and more clothes removed as stones are surrounded. From Stearn's downloads from the ship's library, Papa knows that Shogi and Chun Chi will follow. Devereaux must know what Stearn is doing, but they play until Devereaux is winning most of the games and both appear to desire new challenges: Devereaux wants new games to conquer, while Stearn wants to see how far he can push Devereaux. Papa turns around and leaves when he sees the perversity develop. Some things are better left unwatched, and not spoken of. He suspects it is merely the morals of his age programmed into his psyche, but sexuality really has evolved past his limits.
Otherwise the Jack does his job competently, monitoring the ship, and Devereaux spends admirable hours reducing data as the Karamojo approaches the extreme gammas that will boost the SS Cygni flux and permit the acquisition of superior data. Devereaux hopes to identify spectroscopic signatures of star dragon -- their emerald hue is a shifting laser transition of unknown origin and unknown purpose -- that may allow their numbers and locations to be determined, at least statistically.
The exobiologist Fisher works even harder than Devereaux, devoting more hours to his dragon models. Papa has mixed feelings about his effort. Fisher spends every waking moment with his magnetohydrodynamic dragon circulation code, touring the ship and asking endless questions about every minute operational detail...or with Fang. He asks Henderson to grow him an electrostim unit to aid his muscle development so as to better his boxing performance and minimize the thrashings Fang administers. He designs stimulated boxing routines to practice, but his opponent isn't Fang, but a strange female human/dragon amalgamation, with sinuous motions reminiscent of an electron spiraling about a magnetic field line.
Like Henderson, Fisher keeps a journal. In it he writes:
Never have I been happier. The liberation of knowing the world is gone, and only love and discovery remain, is addictive. Fang is demanding of my time and takes as much as I permit, yet within her exists a hidden vulnerability, almost an alien lifeform, that has been a joy to discover. In some sense I have only months here on the ship, feeding on anticipation as the SS Cygni primary feeds on its disk, but it feels as if eternity vanishes before me, and now is forever. I can obsess over this amazing woman and our mission, and for once in my life my obsession will not drive away a lover, but, in fact, draw us closer and make of her a confidant. I can be myself, and only strengthen our bond. It is love, finally. Now if only she would bend a little my way on strategy, it would be perfect love. I am sure I can convince her my approach is best. I know I'm right. I've thought of a way to hook it, using grappling fields on our remote tugs. The dragon's flight pattern suggests an azimuthal field variation that....
Papa usually does no more than skim the long technical passages -- most, like this one that follows, over five thousand words long and annotated with figures and models -- in search of those about the captain.
Papa has loved Biolathe Captain Lena Fang across the centuries. She is his daughter, and more. Just as he cannot grow a mobile and pummel Henderson, he cannot grow a mobile and love Fang as he would. More code. He is the half-man Jake Barnes to her Brett, ironically repeating the half-relationship from his first novel. All he can do is rage, worry, rail, suffer, and, at her request, counsel. The biggest plus to his current incarnation is that he does not have to watch his weight, a task that haunts his faux-human memories.
He now accompanies Lena Fang through the ages, and they seem as Fisher's eternity, even though all the computer scientists assure him that his personality perceives time at the same rate as a real human mind. Still, all that transpires shipboard is his to visit, all time stopped everywhere, all places available for him to toy with, to travel among, but he follows a linear track in space and time as best as he is able to not jar his human personality. It is only through the greatest effort of will (and that is also false for it is algorithm and not will at all) that he is able to perceive all events not simultaneously in the present.
Thankfully, he does not dwell overmuch on the facts of his own existence because he isn't permitted to. He cannot become chronically depressed or suicidal. He is not Hemingway. He is a human-pattern program with a limited degree of self-awareness.
When Papa, invisible, walks into Fang's cabin, and she and Fisher have been making love after a sweaty bout in the ring, he does not leave. He staggers, as if he had legs that could be weakened by jealousy, then flares, as if he had a real personality that could be incited to active rage and the deep depression of the abyss that could pull the trigger of a shotgun pointed at his brains. He can do nothing but watch until the physical act denied to him runs to completion.
What he usually thinks is this: why did they not provide me with the capability to smell? He has olfactory sensors throughout the ship, but they are keyed to certain hazardous materials only, and he believes he misses terribly that sweet, musky odor of a delicious woman in heat.
So he listens to Fang's cry and watches her lean muscles clench around Fisher's head and longs for something he is not permitted.
Later, after Fisher has left and before Fang has donned her uniform and joined her fighting chair on the bridge of the Karamojo, Papa gives Fang his ear as he has done so many times.
"I've let him in here," she says, tapping her chest, "let him see me not as a captain, but as a woman."
"You need a human presence, daughter, a human touch, to remind you of your soul," he assures her. He wants to say that all she needs is her Papa. He never does.
"I want more," she says. "I want someone to understand, someone not guaranteed to accept."
Her words sting. He says nothing, granting supportive listening, obeying his restrictions.
"I want to tell him secrets that only you and I know."
"What are you afraid of, daughter?" he says, hating the program she has unwittingly engaged, forcing him into playing the role of intuition, of conscience, of psychiatrist.
"Rejection, of course. The worst would be dismissal, to be ignored because I was not important. What have I done but haul cattle? He's been on the edge, daring the unknown, swallowed by inhuman monsters floating in the deep, deep seas of gas giants. He's looked into the abyss."
"You, too, have faced the abyss," he reminds her. She has shared the pivotal events of her life with Papa, and his programming exploits this knowledge.
"I was only eight." Fang licks her lips unconsciously. The same lips, with their funny shape that her grandfather ironically had described as bat-shaped, and hence lucky. "I would rather not talk of it now."
Fang nibbles at her lower lip.
Stymied, Papa must change tactics.
"Was that when you decided to leave your home world for the stars?" Papa curses inwardly at his banal, leading question. He would show empathy rather than continue probing, but the program is triggered. "Is that when you decided such a thing would never happen to you again?"
"It will not," Fang says, lips pressed into a thin, sharp line, the lucky bat-shaped curves flattened. "I am a starship captain, and that means something. I am responsible. Now and forever."
There is truth in what she says. He is Papa and he is the ship, now the Karamojo. He is the ship's breath, the ship's power, the ship's mind.
But Fang can overrule him at him any time on all except for issues of immediate safety.
Papa tells Fang, on this occasion as he has many times, "Now and forever, you are in control. You are responsible. You will not fail."
After she has fallen asleep, another state denied him, the ghost that is Papa leaves to stalk the same endless corridors again. A mind does not need to sleep to dream.