LITMIR.BIZ

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with some bitterness.

      But this was not a place for humanity, and perhaps it never would be. For now the software posted tiny blue flags, all around the rim of the system. These were points of gravitational-lensing focus, Saddle Points, far more of them than in Sol’s simple unipolar gravity field. And there was movement within those dusty lanes of light: bright yellow sparks, Gaijin flower-ships, everywhere.

      The solar system is impoverished by comparison, he thought. This is where the action is in this part of space: Alpha Centauri, riddled with so many Saddle Points it’s like Grand Central Station, and with a sky full of flying mines to boot. He felt humbled, embarrassed, like a country cousin come to the big city.

      There was a blur of motion, washing across his magnified vision.

      

      He rocked back, peering out of his bubble with naked eyes.

      It was a robot, skittering this way and that on its attitude thrusters, crystals of reaction gas sparkling in Alpha light. It came to rest and hovered, limbs splayed, no more than ten metres from the bubble.

      Malenfant pushed himself to the wall nearest the robot, pressed his face against the membrane, and stared back.

      Its attitude suggested watchfulness. But he was probably anthropomorphizing again.

      That dodecahedral core, fat and compact, must have been a couple of metres across. It glistened with panels of complex texture, and there were apertures in the silvery skin within which more machinery gleamed, unrecognizable. The robot had various appendages. A whole forest of them no more than centimetres long bristled from every surface of the core, wiry, almost like a layer of fur. But two of the limbs were longer – ten metres each, perhaps – and articulated like the robot arms carried by the old Space Shuttle, each ending in a knot of machinery. He noticed small attitude thruster nozzles spread along the arms. The whole thing reminded him of one of the old space probes – Voyager, perhaps, or Pioneer – that dense solid core, the flimsy booms, a spacecraft built like a dragonfly.

      The robot showed signs of wear and age: crumpled panels on the dodecahedral core; an antenna-like protrusion that was pitted and scarred, as if by micrometeorite rain; one arm that appeared to have been broken and patched by a sheath of newer material. This is an old machine, he thought, and it might have been travelling a long, long time; he wondered how many suns had baked its fragile skin, how many dusty comet trails clouds had worn away at those filmy structures.

      Right now the two arms were held upwards, as if in an air of supplication, giving the robot an overall W-shape – like the first robot he’d seen.

      Could this be the same machine I met when I came through the hoop? Or, he wondered, am I anthropomorphizing again, longing for individuality where none exists? After all, this thing could never be mistaken for something alive – could it? If nothing else its lack of symmetry – one arm was a good two metres longer than the others – was, on some profound level, deeply disturbing.

      He gave in to his sentimentality.

      ‘Cassiopeia,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ll call you.’

      Female, Malenfant? But the thing did have a certain delicacy and grace. Cassiopeia, then. He raised a hand and waved.

      He half-expected a wave back from those complex robot arms, but they did not move.

      … But now there was a change. An object that looked for all the world like a telephoto lens came pushing out of an aperture in the front of Cassiopeia’s dodecahedral torso, and trained on him.

      He wondered if Cassiopeia had just manufactured the system, in response to its – her – perceived need, in some nano factory in her interior. More likely the technology was simpler, and this ‘camera’ had been assembled from a stock of parts carried within. Maybe Cassiopeia was like a Swiss Army knife, he thought: not infinitely flexible, but with a stock of tools that could be deployed and adapted to a variety of purposes.

      And then, once again, he was startled – this time by a noise from within his bubble.

      It was a radio screech. It had come from the comms headset tucked inside his helmet.

      He grabbed the helmet, pulled out the headset and held one speaker against his ear. The screech was so loud it was painful, and, though he thought he detected traces of structure in the signal, there was nothing resembling human speech.

      He glanced out at the robot, Cassiopeia, still patiently holding her station alongside his membrane.

      She’s trying to communicate, he thought. After years of ignoring the radio and other signals we beamed at her colleagues in the asteroid belt, she’s decided I’m interesting enough to talk to.

      He grinned. Objective achieved, Malenfant. You made them notice us, at least.

      … Yes, but right now it wasn’t doing him much good. The signal he was being sent might contain whole libraries of interstellar wisdom. But he couldn’t decode it; not without banks of supercomputers.

      They still have no real idea what they’re dealing with here, he thought, how limited I am. Maybe I’m fortunate they didn’t try hitting me with signal lasers.

      If we’re going to talk, it will have to be in English. Maybe they can figure that out; we’ve been bombarding them with dictionaries and encyclopaedias for long enough. And it will have to be slow enough for me to understand.

      He dug in a pocket on the leg of his suit until he found a thick block of paper and a propelling pencil.

      Another moment of contact, then: the first words exchanged between human being and alien. Words that would presumably be remembered, if anybody ever found out about this, long after Shakespeare was forgotten.

      What should he say? Poetry? A territorial challenge? A speech of welcome?

      At last, he grunted, licked the pencil lead, and wrote out two words in blocky capitals. Then he pressed the pad up against the clear membrane.

      THANK YOU

      With its – her – telescopic eye, Cassiopeia peered at the paper block for long minutes.

      From her angular body Cassiopeia extruded a new pseudopod. It carried a small metal block the size and shape of his note pad.

      The block bore a message. In English. The text was in a neat, unadorned font.

      COMMUNICATION DYSFUNCTION. REPAIRS MANDATED. REPAIRS PERFORMED. DECISION CONSTRAINED.

      He frowned, trying to figure out the meaning. We don’t understand. Why are you thanking us? You would have died. We had no choice but to help you.

      He thought, then wrote out: IT SHOWED GOODWILL BETWEEN OUR SPECIES. Not the right word, that species; but he couldn’t think of anything better. MAYBE WE WILL UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER IN THE FUTURE. MAYBE WE WILL LIVE IN PEACE.

      The reply: DECISION CONSTRAINED BUT NOT SINGLE-VALUED. INFORMATION REQUIRED CONCERNING OBJECTIVE: REPLICATION; RESOURCE APPROPRIATION; ACTIVITY PROHIBITION; EXOTIC. WHICH.

       We didn’t have to keep you alive, asshole. We didn’t know what the hell you were doing here, and we needed to find out. Maybe you wanted to make lots of little Malenfants from Centauri asteroids. Maybe you wanted to take away our resources for some other purposes. Maybe you wanted to stop us doing what we’re doing. Or maybe something else we can’t even guess. What are you doing here?

      Take care with your answer, Malenfant. Most of those options, from a Gaijin point of view, aren’t too healthy; you mustn’t let them think you’re some kind of von Neumann rapacious terminator robot yourself, or they’ll slit open this air sac, and then your belly.

      I’M HERE OUT OF CURIOSITY.

      A pause. COMMUNICATION DYSFUNCTION.

       What??

      He wrote, WHERE DID YOU COME FROM? WHO MADE YOU? ARE THEY NEARBY?

      Another, longer pause. SEVERAL

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