Infinity's Shore

She stood at a lipless balcony, masked to resemble the former owners of the box, awaiting a reply. The barredspiral symbol on its face seemed slippery to the eye, as if the emblem were slyly looking back at her with a soul far older than her own.

“Toftorph-ph parfful Fhishfingtumpti parff-ful.”

The voice was deeply resonant. If she had been a real Thennanin, those undertones would have stroked her ridge crest, provoking respectful attentiveness. Back home, the Branch Library of Earth spoke like a kindly human grandmother, infinitely experienced, patient, and wise.

“I am prepared to witness,” murmured a button in her ear, rendering the machine’s words in Anglic. “Then I will be available for consultation.”

That was the perpetual trade-off. Gillian could not simply demand information from the archive. She had to give as well.

Normally, that would pose no problem. Any Library unit assigned to a major ship of space was provided camera views of the control room and the vessel’s exterior, in order to keep a WOM record for posterity. In return, the archive offered rapid access to wisdom spanning almost two billion years of civilization, condensed from planet-scale archives of the Library Institute of the Civilization of Five Galaxies.

Only there’s a rub, Gillian thought.

Streaker was not a “major ship of space.” Her own WOM units were solid, cheap, unresponsive — the only kind that impoverished Earth could afford. This lavish cube was a far greater treasure, salvaged on Kithrup from a mighty war cruiser of a rich starfaring clan.

She wanted the cube to continue thinking it was on that cruiser, serving a Thennanin admiral. Hence this disguise.

“Your direct watcher pickups are still disabled,” she explained, using the same dialect. “However, I have brought more recent images, taken by portable recording devices. Please accept-and-receive this data now.”

She signaled the Niss Machine, her clever robotic assistant in the next room. At once there appeared next to the cube a series of vivid scenes. Pictures of the suboceanic trench that local Jijoans called the “Midden”—carefully edited to leave out certain things.

We’re playing a dangerous game, she thought, as flickering holosims showed huge mounds of ancient debris, discarded cities, and abandoned spacecraft. The idea was to pretend that the Thennanin dreadnought Krondor’s Fire was hiding for tactical reasons in this realm of dead machines … and to do this without showing Streaker’s own slender hull, or any sign of dolphins, or even revealing the specific name and locale of this planet.

If we make it home, or to a neutral Institute base, we’ll be legally bound to hand over this unit. Even under anonymous seal, it would be safest for it to know as little as we can get away with telling.

Anyway, the Library might not prove as cooperative to mere Earthlings. Better to keep it thinking it was dealing with its official lease-holders.

Ever since the disaster at Oakka, Gillian had made this her chief personal project, pulling off a hoax in order to pry data out of their prize. In many ways, the Library cube was more valuable than the relics Streaker had snatched from the Shallow Cluster.

In fact, the subterfuge had worked better than expected. Some of the information won so far might prove critically useful to the Terragens Council.

Assuming we ever make it home again …

Ever since Kithrup, when Streaker lost the best and brightest of her crew, that had always seemed a long shot, at best.

In one particular area of technology, twenty-second-century humans had already nearly equaled Galactic skill levels, even before contact.

Holographic imagery.

Special-effects wizards from Hollywood, Luanda, and Aristarchus were among the first to dive confidently into alien arts, undismayed by anything as trivial as a billion-year head start. Within mere decades Earthlings could say they had mastered a single narrow field as well as the best starfaring clans—

Virtuosity at lying with pictures.

For thousands of years, when we weren’t scratching for food we were telling each other fables. Prevaricating. Propagandizing. Casting illusions. Making movies.

Lacking science, our ancestors fell back on magic.

The persuasive telling of untruths.

Still it seemed a wonder to Gillian that her Thennanin disguise worked so well. Clearly the “intelligence” of this unit, while awesome, was of a completely different kind than hers, with its own limitations.

Or else maybe it simply doesn’t care.