For Love and Glory

L

The sun in its slow course was not yet at noon when they ventured out. There was no need to leave a watch aboard. Hulda could do that herself, and respond to their radio voices, while three together stood a better chance than one or two. They went afoot in power-jointed spacesuits. Jetpacks would have been too bulky for them to carry much in the way of instruments, recorders, and other apparatus, and unlikely to give any critical advantage in an emergency. Even in this gravity, they were rather heavily loaded.

The burden included weapons, sidearms for all, a light electric rifle for Lissa, a high-caliber one for Hebo, and the portable missile launcher with its rack of explosive darts for Dzesi. Their one hope was that none would be needed or, if worst came to worst, some would be of use.

Hebo spoke for them to Authority: “We’re on our way.”

“That is well for you,” replied Ironbright. “Remember that you will be judged by your results.” The transmission lag was barely perceptible.

Hebo’s face hardened behind the viewplate. “Don’t you forget that they know on Asborg we’re here. You’ll be judged too.”

“Do not waste time quibbling.”

“Then don’t you waste it by trying to manage our mission.”

“Not unless that appears necessary,” Ironbright agreed. “We have you under constant observation with good resolution. We scan considerably farther than you can see. If we detect something anomalous, you will be informed.”

“Thanks,” snorted Hebo, and switched off spaceward transmission while leaving reception open.

The three walked on. They could not hear the tenuous wind, merely see dust drifting before it across rock, sand, strewn boulders, now and then a frost-blanket in the shade. As the sun climbed and shone down where shadow had been, gases began to steam from these, white wisps quickly scattered and lost. Insulated boots muffled footfalls, but Lissa sensed them faintly through her bones.

After a silent while, Hebo said, “If we get out of this alive— no, God damn it, when we do—how do you figure you’ll spend your discoverers’ awards and royalties and whatever else they pay us? Ought to make us filthy rich.”

“I will return home and fare again with my Ulas Trek, a chieftain,” Dzesi answered. Lissa thought she heard an undertone of longing.

“I’ll rest and revel on Asborg till I’ve had enough, whenever that may be,” she herself said as cheerfully as she was able. “Oh, and we must make proper arrangements about Venusberg and so on, but that should be simple.”

“What then?” Hebo pursued.

“How can I say? There’ll be something interesting for certain. What of you?”

“I dunno either. I need a long vacation too, and can’t imagine a better place for it than Asborg. Later, yeah, who knows?” He paused before going on, unwontedly awkwardly: “Would you, uh, like to continue this partnership?”

The question, not unexpected, nevertheless kindled a flare of happiness. “Yes,” she replied. “Indefinitely. Maybe for always. We’ll see.” Brazenly indifferent to Dzesi’s presence: “Once we’re back in the ship and out of these suits, I’ll show you. Save your strength, big boy!”

His glove gripped hers, his laugh rang. “I’ll never have anything better to spend it on.”

Joy and lust blew away like the ice vapors. Awe mounted. They were nearing the Forerunner work.

First they passed through the shimmering. It was like going two or three meters in a bright haze; then they were beyond, inside, and vision cleared.

Delicate intricacies loomed high over them. The flat-fused ground below and between sheened darkly in the harsh light. Lesser things, some so small as to be scarcely more than sparks, were spread well apart in a kind of spiraling pattern. Machines went to and fro on their tasks; a broad radio band whirred, clicked, whistled with their communications. Most of these robots ranged in length from a few centimeters to perhaps one meter, bodies slender and rounded, scurrying on legs or wheels or whatever it might be underneath their beetle-like shells—until they extruded antennae, arms, tentacles that flowed themselves into unidentifiable tool-shapes. Twice the explorers spied Gargantuan-sized hulks moving with stately slowness. What they carried out was impossible to understand, except that it had to do with operation, maintenance, and further construction. On several helical towers and polygonal skeletons, machines climbing about aloft spun gleaming webs, almost like spiders. Another evidently shot forth a thin, invisible energy beam, for metal glowed and softened as it moved along, its manipulators dextrously shaping a structure, artistry alive. Another emerged from a closed dome, although no door opened for it, bearing a load of rods to still others, which carried them to the top of a half-finished spire. Others—

Step by tensed, cautious step, the newcomers advanced. The instruments on their backs extended and swiveled sensors, peered and listened through the whole spectrum, did not intrude with radar or sonar but surveyed and triangulated, micrometrically precise, a cataract of data pouring into their recorders. When a robot headed their way, they moved aside and it went on past. They spoke little among themselves, very softly.

Nothing happened to them. They searched through the complex on a zigzag route that brought them near most of it, seemingly altogether ignored.

Once Dzesi rasped, “Does it not, any part of it, have any awareness of us? Is it nothing but blind machinery?”

“I can’t believe that,” Lissa answered. “Something like this must require all kinds of sensitivities, yes, and computer power. If it isn’t conscious the way we are, it must at least have capabilities for evaluating information and making decisions, like a spaceship’s but surely greater.”

The thought ran chill: Probably not a pseudo-personality like Hulda’s. We program for that because we feel more comfortable with it. What is this thing’s mode of mentation?

Hebo nodded inside his helmet. “Yeah. To handle the unexpected. Bound to crop up now and then, if only a freak storm or groundquake. In fact, I’m getting a hunch that this whole system wasn’t laid out from the beginning. How could the Forerunners know exactly what the planet would be like millions of years in the future? My current guess is, the original ‘seed’ wasn’t a preprogrammed von Neumann device. It had as big a database as they could provide, and general instructions. When it ‘woke’ it designed things according to what best fitted local environments. As it gained ‘experience,’ it modified those specs. You might say the different complexes didn’t ‘grow,’ they evolved.”

The party searched onward. They seldom stopped to rest, and then just for a few minutes, with a gulp of water from their drinking tubes and a bite of food from their chowlocks. They were strung too tightly. Yet nothing ever responded or threatened or did anything but work its mysteries.

A few installations looked weirdly half-identifiable. Well, Lissa thought, maybe the Forerunners weren’t really very far ahead of us today, three million years ago. Our scientific and technological growth curve isn’t rising as steeply as it used to, but it’s still upward. Give us a few more decades, and we may be able to equal everything of theirs we’ve come upon.

But what are they like now?

Meaningless question.

All right, what would we find if we or our probes could survive at the galactic heart? What have the Earth people learned?

What, maybe, have they taught?

The sun trudged westward. Shadows lengthened. Dust scudded thinly on an evening wind between the great shapes.

“Okay,” said Hebo. “We’ve pretty well quartered the whole place, got enough stuff already to keep the scientists out of mischief for the next twenty years, and I, at least, hear some cold beers calling me, and dinner, and about ten hours’ worth of sleep.”

“You’re not unique, my dear,” Lissa sighed. Suddenly the weight on her dragged, feet and muscles ached, nerves seemed to slump instead of quiver.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to take a rain check on what we were talking about earlier,” said Hebo.

Again she must infer his meaning, obvious though it was. A chuckle rose dry in her throat. “That’s mutual too. Let’s consider it a loan.”

“To be repaid at a high rate of interest.”

They laughed aloud, humanly ridiculous, humanly snatching after any hint of gladness. Dzesi purred assent.

They took the shortest route back to open desert. As if standing sentinel, a helicoid towered there, a hundred meters into heaven. They passed through the haze. The sun blazed low above icy hills.

A voice snapped from their spaceband receivers. Lissa knew it, Esker’s. An image of the ugly little man sprang up in her mind. He’d be hunched forward, sweat a-glisten on brow and cheeks, eyes burning like yonder sun. “So, you’re done for the day!”

Hebo and his companions turned their transmitters on. “About time,” he growled.

“Yes, yes. You should have stepped clear and reported every hour or two. We watched, but didn’t dare send. Who could tell how the robots would react to a message straight into their domain. Or how it might interact with that force-field? If you’d come to grief, what a treasure we’d have lost!”

“Including us.”

“Send your data immediately.”

“Look, we can’t do that till we’re back in the ship and have downloaded. There’s a lot.”

“That’s what I meant, you dolt. No letting it wait till morning. What might happen meanwhile?”

“If you’re that concerned about safety, which I can understand,” Lissa interjected, “we’ll lift straightaway.”

“No. You’ll stay. You’ll send your data, and tomorrow go back for more. You can barely have skirted the fringes of what’s there.”

She stiffened where she stood. “In other words,” she said, “to you we’re information-collecting machines. To be worked to destruction.”

“No. No. But can’t you see, this is an absolutely priceless opportunity? I don’t think another will ever occur. We’re risking ourselves also, you know. It’s worth it. Why, just a study of the hyperwave system—”

“What?”

“There’s got to be something of the kind, a transmitter, somewhere on the planet, perhaps at every site. In all our searching, we detected no trace of anything like a relay. Yes, hyperphenomena aren’t supposed to occur so deep in a gravity well. But somehow, here, they do. The Forerunners knew, know how to make it happen, directly on a planet.”

“Well,” Hebo blurted, momentarily caught by the passion in spite of himself, “we did find a big something that looked as though it might be some such.”

“I thought so!” Esker yelled. “The technology may not be very important to us by itself, but, but what we can learn about the structure of space—natural laws we haven’t suspected—don’t gamble with your data! Get back to your ship and send them!”

Dzesi snarled.

A flat translator voice broke through, a Susaian tongue behind it. Lissa well-nigh saw Esker shoved aside. She heard the urgency: “Ironbright here. Beware. A strange airborne object has come over our horizon. It’s bound for you at high speed. Take shelter if you can. It may be hostile.”