Ozzie hurriedly unbuttoned his woolen coat and carried it over his arm. He made his way down the winding gravel path out of the sheltered lee of rock and into the wide valley, heading toward the only surface structure in the asteroid. His bungalow was barely that, five rooms of plain white drycoral walls, with hardwood floors and a gray slate roof that overhung to provide cover for the encircling veranda. Belowground he’d constructed a big vault for his library of real books. Not that he ever ventured down there; modified maidbots brought up whatever he needed so that the cool dry atmosphere was disturbed as little as possible.
He did use the rest of the modest building, its living room, kitchen, study, bedroom, and bathroom. There was nothing else he wanted, not to take care of his body’s requirements. While he was here he spent most of his time outside anyway. A comfy deckchair in the garden, shaded by a big copper beech; the swimming pool was constantly refreshed by a brook that gurgled over broad flat stones as it ran through the middle of the lawn.
A big maidbot took his coat from him as he arrived, and rolled away to store it in the cloakroom. There were over a hundred thousand bots in the asteroid, all of them directed by the RI. The little artificial worldlet was self-sufficient, and self-maintaining thanks to the very large array that ran it. With its comprehensive manufacturing facilities belowground producing the majority of components used by the environmental support machinery, very little had to be imported. What did come in tended to be upgrades rather than replacements. The designers had spent years on refining the systems to the ultimate in low-maintenance sustainability. Even Ozzie had worried about the cost while the blueprints were being drawn up, but in the end he’d persevered. Now, total freedom was his reward. Engineers from CST still visited once every couple of years (under horrendously strict nondisclosure contracts) to inspect and occasionally modify the gateway machinery, but that was all. And if he withdrew from the human race entirely, the RI could conceivably keep it all going if he really wanted; it was the most powerful program composite the SI had ever written.
“Any messages?” he asked out loud as he went into the kitchen.
“Several hundred thousand,” the RI replied. “Only eight came through the filters.”
Ozzie opened the fridge and rummaged through the containers and hand-wrapped packages. His food was supplied by the same London greengrocer that held the warrant from the king of England. The shop’s snob value and prices were phenomenal, but he had to admit their delicatessen counter couldn’t be bettered anywhere in the Commonwealth. He found a bottle of mineral water and popped the top; despite the coffee he’d drunk at the Council meeting he could still feel his hangover—product of a too-long stay at the Silvertopia Club on StLincoln the night before. “Give them to me.” His virtual vision showed the messages and their clusters; they were from CST, his finance lawyers, two from his newest children, one from an antiquarian book dealer who thought he might have a first edition copy of Raft signed by the author, the results of datasearches through superluminal cosmology theory papers. By the time he’d skimmed through them all he was out at the garden chair and kicking his shoes off. As usual he picked one message at random from the perennial mass that the filter had blocked. He laughed delightedly as he read the weird and wondrous proposal for cooling stars that came above G in the spectral classification, a paper called “Solarforming the Galaxy” by the nutter who’d sent it.
He lounged back in the chair and took a pair of sunglasses from a maidbot. It was a strategic view, his garden was positioned so that he could see down three-quarters of the curving green wings that were the cavity’s interior. One of the mile-and-a-half-high mountains was directly ahead, its giant waterfall emerging from the snowfield a mere three hundred yards short of the deadly needle peak. The vast cataract of water performed an elegant twist as it fell through coils of mist and spume until it finally pounded into a lake at the bottom. That was just one of the vistas that washed over Ozzie with its color-riot and soothing waters. He never did understand why people collected or even admired art; the greatest human artist could never hope to match what nature did with a single flower.
“I’d like to talk to the SI, please,” Ozzie told the asteroid’s RI. There weren’t many people in the Commonwealth who could talk to the SI directly. Ozzie and Nigel qualified, given their role in establishing the SI, and the President was also given the courtesy along with senior government department heads; otherwise all communications had to be conducted at a very formal level through buffer programs. Of course, the SI did occasionally make exceptions; people claimed to have struck deals with it, or received a surprise call revealing where a lost child could be found. Ozzie had heard that Paula Myo had some kind of arrangement with it—which didn’t surprise him.
“We’re here, Ozzie,” the smooth voice said immediately.
“Yo, man, good of you to come visiting. So what’s new?”
“Many things, but you are only interested in one.”
“True. So how come you ganged up with my friend Nigel to get this stupid space cadet mission off the ground. That’s like the ultimate not-what-you-are.”
“Our response was measured and prudent. What else did you expect?”
“I don’t get it, you guys are normally so conservative.”
“Investigation is a conservative option.”
“Investigation is poking a sharp stick into a hornet’s nest. If we send a starship out there, then whoever put that barrier up is gonna know about it. They are so far ahead of us technologically it’s scary.”
“If they are significantly advanced, they will know about the Commonwealth anyway. Wormhole generation creates a great deal of gravitational distortion as well as an easily detectable wave pattern within so-called hyperspace.”
“If they’re all tucked up cozy inside the barrier they won’t…” Ozzie put a hand on his head as he realized. “Wait, the ones inside are the defenders. It’s the aliens outside who are the aggressors. So if we’re that easy to detect, why haven’t they come looking for us?”
“A very good question. Assuming the barrier is defensive, we propose three possible options. They have arrived, and we don’t know it, or realize it.”
“The High Angel!”
“Indeed. Or the Silfen.”
“I dunno about that, man, they don’t seem the type. What’s the second option?”
“The aliens have already been here and examined us, after which they simply ignored us.”
“Too low-down for them to bother with. Yeah, I can dig that. And number three?”
“Number three is the unknown. It is why we need to travel to the Dyson Pair and investigate what has happened.”
“But why now? Hell, man, you can afford to wait; leave it a couple of thousand years until we’re like good and ready to go take a proper look. I mean, even I might still be around. What’s the hurry?”
“In order to respond to a situation, it must first be understood.”
“I’m not arguing that. But why now?”
“Because now is where we are. This should be faced, whatever it is.”
“Maybe you’re interested. I can dig you enjoy a puzzle, something for you to think over and solve. But it’s going to be our asses on the line if this goes all to hell.”
“That’s not entirely true; ordinarily the physical world does not concern us—”
“Hey! You live in it.”
“Yes, but it does not concern us. The physical does not affect us, or interfere with us.”
“I get it. The physical Commonwealth doesn’t affect you, but superior aliens with ray guns and battleship flying saucers might.”
“We accord the defense theory a high probability. In which case an aggressor will exist. If there is an entity so powerful and malevolent loose in the physical universe, then we could very well be affected.”
Ozzie took a long drink of his mineral water. He could remember what it had been like when the SIs came together at the end of the twenty-first century; people had been very frightened at the time. “Frankenbrain” was one of the terms bandied about, mainly by a minority of humans who wanted to pull the plug just in case. Along with Nigel, he’d helped establish the new cyber-based intelligences on their own planet, Vinmar. After all, the majority of SIs had originated out of the AI smartware running in the very large arrays built to run CST wormhole generators, and some solution had to be found. The Commonwealth, and specifically CST, was dependent on big arrays, so Ozzie and Nigel negotiated with the SIs to format their replacements in the form of RIs.