STAR V-1020-10XC
(50 YEARS PREVIOUS)
IT WAS time.
The harvester’s call had gone out months ago, summoning her children back to her. From the clouds of a gas giant they came, wisps of methane trailing behind them; from above the molten seas of the innermost planet they came, their overheated wings fading in the chill of open space; from the belt of asteroids they came, samples trailing behind them like the segments of a vast insect. Some had harvested enough mass that it was hard for them to accelerate, which is why she had given them so much time to get back to her. It also gave the service bots time to organize the deliveries that had already been made, so that not a single inch of space would be wasted.
It had taken her years to get to this system, and years more to fulfill her mission here. It would take her years to get home.
Time meant nothing to her.
She cruised the skies above an alien sun, buffeted by its solar winds, feeding on its light. Sometimes she passed close enough to a planet that her vast wings cast a shadow upon the ground, as if a monstrous bird were circling overhead. Then she returned to the darkness again, to drink in more of the star’s radiation and prepare for her return. She had enough power stored to fuel the trip back to Harmony, and enough raw mass to build an entire station once she got there. Crystals and metals and gases and ice filled her hold, and even some organics: anything that her programming told her might be of value to humans. This solar system had been a rich one, and her children had done their jobs well.
If she had been human, she would have been proud of her performance. Since she was merely a mechanical construct—albeit an unusually adaptable one—she simply felt complete.
The last of her children were arriving now, and they drew in their wings as they approached, so that they could squeeze into the narrow berths along her hull. Soon they would surrender their autonomy, and be absorbed into the ship’s greater digital intelligence. The harvester would be complete once more.
At last it was done. She ran an inventory application to make sure all her parts and programs were accounted for, then spread her wings wide—miles wide—to catch the solar winds and bind them to her purpose. A sudden flare from the star’s surface licked at her rear engines as she began to accelerate, then was gone. A human poet might have suggested that the star was saying goodbye.
Light years in the distance, Harmony Node was waiting.
What folly, to think that a machine created by humans could have the power to strip its makers’ children of humanity!
NUY CHENGARA
The Hausman Delusion
HARMONY NODE
INSHIP: ARTEMIS
THE AINNIQ was eerily beautiful. A sliver of space that did not look like space, alive with shadows the mind could not identify. A flaw in a black jewel, catching the light unexpectedly—then disappearing from view as the angle changed, equally unexpectedly. Colors that had no name shimmered within its depths; shadows that required no light pulsed up and down its length. The universe had been fractured in its first nanoseconds of birth, space-time wounded beyond hope of healing, and the Guerans had learned to navigate those wounds as one might the rivers of a great world, or the veins of a body. Entering the ainniq, a ship might defy the usual limits of space and time; skipped along its edge at just the right angle, a signal might cross the galaxy in less than a lifetime.
Traveling through the ainniq, one might also be devoured by the unique predators that called it home.
Ru gazed at her main viewscreen as she strapped herself into her autochair, watching the ainniq until the bulk of the outship blocked it from her view. As always, it inspired a sense of visceral awe, even humility. Here was a danger she dared not face on her own, far beyond the bounds of normal human recklessness. Beyond that darkling gateway were creatures that the human mind could not fathom and the human eye could not see, creatures whose flesh was the stuff of space itself. Only Guerans with Pilot’s Syndrome could see them clearly, and even that was not always enough to avoid them. Some outships never returned.
Then the bay of the outship closed around Ru’s vessel and the ainniq was gone. With a sigh she loaded the theta-sleep program into her headset and leaned back in the autochair. Waking brains called to the dragons of outspace, so only people who were needed to pilot the outship would be conscious during its passage. That was fine with her. Danger was an elixir she was normally hard pressed to resist, but this was a threat beyond her ken. Her Variation might make her impulsive, even reckless, but it did not make her suicidal.
She slept.
* * *
Harmony Node. The name was a joke. Maybe even a deliberate joke. Guildfolk were not incapable of humor, though it was usually of a dark and ironic sort. This would certainly qualify.
The node was located in a region of space with nothing of any special interest to humankind: no habitable planets, no lost colonies, not even a star system within convenient distance that might be farmed for supplies. If not for the presence of the ainniq it wouldn’t even have been given a name. But there were ainniq here, two of them, and where they merged a fork was visible, providing a landmark for outpilot navigation. That was enough to merit human development. Like ancient sailors who had established a base of operations anywhere they found a viable harbor, the Guild established settlements wherever its outpilots could surface safely. In this case, that meant in the middle of nowhere.
Why the place had drawn so many Terran corporations was anyone’s guess. Maybe they liked the idea of a node that did not have a Variant world associated with it. Or maybe one of them had moved here for that reason, and then others had followed in its wake, hungry to spy on a rival, sabotage competing projects, or maybe just fulfill the old Earth adage: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Back home, Terran megacorps waged war like ancient nation-states, and while such behavior wasn’t tolerated in the outworlds, Terran hostilities had a way of infecting more civilized cultures. Perhaps it was just as well that seven of the nine Terran stations in Harmony had negotiated for independent status, setting them apart from the rest of outworld society.
But there was a price for that. Security surrounding the independent stations was complicated and often inefficient, which attracted other types of entrepreneurs: black marketeers, scavengers, smugglers of both digital and material goods, even pirates. The outer sectors were as close to a lawless frontier as one might find in the outworlds.
What better name for such a place than Harmony?
ALERT: APPROACHING SHENSHIDO CORPORATE TERRITORY. LEAVING ALLIED SPACE. TERRAN CORPORATE LAW WILL APPLY.
Ru closed her reading program and opened a com link to the station.
THIS IS SKIMMER ARTEMIS, REQUESTING PERMISSION TO DOCK. ID SKM411-AD72-11A. PLEASE ASSIGN APPROACH PATH.
There was no response.