My Mother, Dancing by Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress’s most recent book, Nothing Human, came out last fall from Golden Gryphon Press. It has been called “a Childhood’s End for the biotech millennium.”

Fermi’s Paradox, California, 1950: Since planet formation appears to be common, and since the processes that lead to the development of life are a continuation of those that develop planets, and since the development of life leads to intelligence and intelligence to technology—then why hasn’t a single alien civilization contacted Earth?

Where is everybody?

They had agreed, laughing, on a form of the millennium contact, what Micah called “human standard,” although Kabil had insisted on keeping hirs konfol and Deb had not dissolved hirs crest, which waved three inches above hirs and hummed. But, then, Deb! Ling had designed floating baktor for the entire ship, red and yellow mostly, that combined and recombined in kaleidoscopic loveliness that only Ling could have programmed. The viewport was set to magnify, the air mixture just slightly intoxicating, the tinglies carefully balanced by Cal, that master. Ling had wanted “natural” sleep cycles, but Cal’s arguments had been more persuasive, and the tinglies massaged the limbic so pleasantly. Even the child had some. It was a party.

The ship slipped into orbit around the planet, a massive subJovian far from its sun, streaked with muted color. “Lovely,” breathed Deb, who lived for beauty.

Cal, the biologist, was more practical: “I ran the equations; by now there should be around two hundred thousand of them in the rift, if the replication rate stayed constant.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” said Ling, the challenger, and the others laughed. The tinglies really were a good idea.

The child, Harrah, pressed hirs face to the window. “When can we land?”

The adults smiled at each other. They were so proud of Harrah, and so careful. Hirs was the first gene-donate of all of them except Micah, and probably the only one for the rest of them except Cal, who was a certified intellect donor. Kabil knelt beside Harrah, bringing hirs face close to the child’s height.

“Little love, we can’t land. Not here. We must see the creations in holo.”

“Oh,” Harrah said, with the universal acceptance of childhood. It had not changed in five thousand years, Ling was fond of remarking, that child idea that whatever it lived was the norm. But, then … Ling.

“Access the data,” Cal said, and Harrah obeyed, reciting it aloud as hirs parents had all taught hirs. Ling smiled to see that Harrah still closed hirs eyes to access, but opened them to recite.

“The creations were dropped on this planet 273 E-years ago. They were the one-hundred-fortieth drop in the Great Holy Mission that gives us our life. The creations were left in a closed-system rift . . . what does that mean?”

“The air in the creations’ valley doesn’t get out to the rest of the planet, because the valley is so deep and the gravity so great. They have their own air.”

“Oh. The creations are cyborged replicators, programmed for self-awareness. They are also programmed to expect human contact at the millennium. They …”

“Enough,” said Kabil, still kneeling beside Harrah. Hirs stroked hirs hair, black today. “The important thing, Harrah, is that you remember that these creations are beings, different from us but with the same life force, the only life force. They must be respected, just as people are, even if they look odd to you.”

“Or if they don’t know as much as you,” said Cal. “They won’t, you know.”

“I know,” Harrah said. They had made hirs an accommodator, with strong genes for bonding. They already had Ling for challenge. Harrah added, “praise Fermi and Kwang and Arlbeni for the emptiness of the universe.”

Ling frowned. Hirs had opposed teaching Harrah the simpler, older folklore of the Great Mission. Ling would have preferred the child receive only truth, not religion. But Deb had insisted. Feed the imagination first, hirs had said, and later Harrah can separate science from prophecy. But the tinglies felt sweet, and the air mixture was set for a party, and hirs own baktors floated in such graceful pattern that Ling, even Ling, could not quarrel.

“I wonder,” Deb said dreamily, “what they have learned in 273 years.”

“When will they holo?” Harrah said. “Are we there yet?”

Our mother is coming.

Two hours more and they will come, from beyond the top of the world. When they come, there will be much dancing. Much rejoicing. All of us will dance and rejoice, even those who have detached and let the air

carry them away. Those ones will receive our transmissions and dance with us.

Or maybe our mother will also transmit to where those of us now sit. Maybe they will transmit to all, even those colonies out of our transmission range. Why not? Our mother, who made us, can do whatever is necessary.

First, the dancing. Then, the most necessary thing of all. Our mother will solve the program flaw. Completely, so that none of us will die. Our mother doesn’t die. We are not supposed to die, either. Our mother will transmit the program to correct this.

Then the dancing there will be!

Kwang’s Resolution, Bohr Station, 2552: Since the development of the Quantum Transport, humanity has visited nearly a thousand planets in our galaxy and surveyed many more. Not one of them has developed any life of any kind, no matter how simple. Not one.

No aliens have contacted Earth because there is nobody else out there.

Harrah laughed in delight. Hirs long black hair swung through a drift of yellow baktors. “The creations look like oysters!”

The holocube showed uneven rocky ground through thick, murky air. A short distance away rose the abrupt steep walls of the rift, thousands of feet high. Attached to the ground by thin, flexible, mineral-conducting tubes were hundreds of uniform, metal-alloy double shells. The shells held self-replicating nanomachinery, including the rudimentary AI, and living eukaryotes sealed into selectively permeable membranes. The machinery ran on the feeble sunlight and on energy produced by anaerobic bacteria, carefully engineered for the thick atmospheric stew of methane, hydrogen, helium, ammonia, and carbon dioxide.

The child knew none of this. Hirs saw the “oysters” jumping up in time on their filaments, jumping and falling, flapping their shells open and closed, twisting and flapping and bobbing. Dancing.

Kabil laughed, too. “Nowhere in the original programming! They learned it!”

“But what could the stimulus have been?” Ling said. “How lovely to find out!”

“Sssshhh, we’re going to transmit,” Micah said. Hirs eyes glowed. Micah was the oldest of them all; hirs had been on the original drop. “Seeding 140, are you there?”

“We are here! We are Seeding 140! Welcome, our mother!”

Harrah jabbed hirs finger at the holocube. “We’re not your mother!”

Instantly, Deb closed the transmission. Micah said harshly, “Harrah! Your manners!”

The child looked scared. Deb said, “Harrah, we talked about this. The creations are not like us, but their ideas are as true as ours, on their own world. Don’t laugh at them.”

From Kabil, “Don’t you remember, Harrah? Access the learning session!”

“I … remember,” Harrah faltered.

“Then show some respect!” Micah said. “This is the Great Mission!”

Harrah’s eyes teared. Kabil, the tender-hearted, put hirs hand on Harrah’s shoulder. “Small heart, the Great Mission gives meaning to our lives.”

“I … know… .”

Micah said, “You don’t want to be like those people who just use up all their centuries in mere pleasure, with no structure to their wanderings around the galaxy, no purpose beyond seeing what the nanos can produce that they haven’t produced before, no difference between today and tomorrow, no—”

“That’s sufficient,” Ling says. “Harrah understands, and regrets. Don’t give an Arlbeni Day speech, Micah.”

Micah said stiffly, “It matters, Ling.”

“Of course it matters. But so do the creations, and they’re waiting. Deb, open the transmission again… . Seeding 140, thank you for your welcome! We return!”

Arlbeni’s Vision, Planet Cadrys, 2678: We have been fools.

Humanity is in despair. Nano has given us everything, and nothing. Endless pleasures empty of effort, endless tomorrows empty of purpose, endless experiences empty of meaning. From evolution to sentience, sentience to nano, nano to the decay of sentience.

But the fault is ours. We have overlooked the greatest gift ever given humanity: the illogical emptiness of the universe. It is against evolution, it is against known physical processes. Therefore, how can it exist? And why?

It can exist only by the intent of something greater than the physical processes of the universe. A conscious Intent.

The reason can only be to give humanity, the universe’s sole inheritor, knowledge of this Intent. The emptiness of the universe—anomalous, unexplainable, impossible—has been left for us to discover, as the only convincing proof of God.

Our mother has come! We dance on the seabed. We transmit the news to the ones who have detached and floated away. We rejoice together, and consult the original program.

“You are above the planetary atmosphere,” we say, new words until just this moment, but now understood. All will be understood now, all corrected. “You are in a ship, as we are in our shells.”

“Yes,” says our mother. “You know we cannot land.”

“Yes,” we say, and there is momentary dysfunction. How can they help us if they cannot land? But only momentary. This is our mother. And they landed us here once, didn’t they? They can do whatever is necessary.

Our mother says, “How many are you now, Seeding 140?”

“We are 79,432,” we say. Sadness comes. We endure it, as we must.

Our mother’s voice changes in wavelength, in frequency. “Seventy-nine thousand? Are you … we had calculated more. Is this replication data correct?”

A packet of data arrives. We scan it quickly; it matches our programming.

“The data is correct, but …” We stop. It feels like another dying ceremony, suddenly, and it is not yet time for a dying ceremony. We will wait another few minutes. We will tell our mother in another few minutes. Instead, we ask, “What is your state of replication, our mother?”

Another change in wavelength and frequency. We scan and match data, and it is in our databanks: laughter, a form of rejoicing. Our mother rejoices.

“You aren’t equipped for visuals, or I would show you our replicant,” our mother says. “But the rate is much, much lower than yours. We have one new replicant with us on the ship.”

“Welcome new replicant!” we say, and there is more rejoicing. There, and here.

“I’ve restricted transmission … there’s the t-field’s visual,” Micah said.

A hazy cloud appeared to one side of the holocube, large enough to hold two people comfortably, three close together. Only words spoken inside the field would now transmit. Baktors scuttled clear of the ionized haze. Deb stepped inside the field, with Harrah; Cal moved out of it. Hirs frowned at Micah.

“They can’t be only seventy-nine thousand-plus if the rate of replication held steady. Check the resource data, Micah.”

“Scanning… . no change in available raw materials… . no change in sunlight per square unit.”

“Scan their counting program.”

“I already did. Fully functional.”

“Then run an historical scan of replicants created.”

“That will take time … there, it’s started. What about attrition?”

Cal said, “Of course. I should have thought of that. Do a seismic survey and match it with the original data. A huge quake could easily have destroyed two-thirds of them, poor seedings… .”

Ling said, “You could ask them.”

Kabil said, “If it’s not a cultural taboo. Remember, they have had time to evolve a culture, we left them that ability.”

“Only in response to environmental stimuli. Would a quake or a mudslide create enough stimulus pressure to evolve death taboos?”

They looked at each other. Something new in the universe, something humanity had not created … this was why they were here! Their eyes shone, their breaths came faster. Yet they were uncomfortable, too, at the mention of death. How long since any of them … oh, yes. Ling’s clone in that computer malfunction, but so many decades ago… . Discomfort, excitement, compassion for Seeding 140, yes compassion most of all, how terrible if the poor creations had actually lost so many in a quake… . All of them felt it, and meant it, the emotion was genuine. And in their minds the finger of God touched them for a moment, with the holiness of the tiny human struggle against the emptiness of the universe.

“Praise Fermi and Kwang and Arlbeni …” one of them murmured, and no one was sure who, in the general embarrassment that took them a moment later. They were not children.

Micah said, “Match the seismic survey with the original data,” and moved off to savor alone the residue of natural transcendence, rarest and strangest of the few things nano could not provide.

Inside the hazy field Harrah said, “Seeding! I am dancing just like you!” and moved hirs small body back and forth,up and down on the ship’s deck.

Arlbeni’s Vision, Planet Cadrys, 2678: In the proof of God lies its corollary. The Great Intent has left the universe empty, but for us. It is our mission to fill it.

Look around you, look at what we’ve become. At the pointless destruction, the aimless boredom, the spiritual despair. The human race cannot exist without purpose, without vision, without faith. Filling the emptiness of the universe will rescue us from our own.

Our mother says, “Do you play games?”

We examine the data carefully. There is no match.

Our mother speaks again. “That was our new replicant speaking, Seeding 140. Hirs is only half-created as yet, and hirs program language is not fully functional. Hirs means, of the new programs you have created for yourselves since the original seeding, which ones in response to the environment are expressions of rejoicing? Like dancing?”

“Yes!” we say. “We dance in rejoicing. And we also throw pebbles in rejoicing and catch pebbles in rejoicing. But not for many years since.”

“Do it now!” our mother says.

This is our mother. We are not rejoicing. But this is our mother. We pick up some pebbles.

“No,” our mother says quickly, “you don’t need to throw pebbles. That was the new replicant again. Hirs does not yet understand that seedings do what, and only what, they wish. Your … your mother does not command you. Anything you do, anything you have learned, is as necessary as what we do.”

“I’m sorry again,” our mother says, and there is physical movement registered in the field of transmission.

We do not understand. But our mother has spoken of new programs, of programs created since the seeding, in response to the environment. This we understand, and now it is time to tell our mother of our need. Our mother has asked. Sorrow floods us, rejoicing disappears, but now is the time to tell what is necessary.

Our mother will make all functional once more.

“Don’t scold hirs like that, hirs is just a child,” Kabil said. “Harrah, stop crying, we know you didn’t mean to impute to them any inferiority.”

Micah, hirs back turned to the tiny parental drama, said to Cal, “Seismic survey complete. No quakes, only the most minor geologic disturbances … really, the local history shows remarkable stability.”

“Then what accounts for the difference between their count of themselves and the replication rate?”

“It can’t be a real difference.”

“But … oh! Listen. Did they just say—”

Hirs turned slowly toward the holocube.

Harrah said at the same moment, through hirs tears, “They stopped dancing.”

Cal said, “Repeat that,” remembered hirself, and moved into the transmission field, replacing Harrah. “Repeat that, please, Seeding 140. Repeat your last transmission.”

The motionless metal oysters said, “We have created a new program in response to the Others in this environment. The Others who destroy us.”

Cal said, very pleasantly, “ ‘Others’? What Others?”

“The new ones. The mindless ones. The destroyers.”

“There are no others in your environment,” Micah said. “What are you trying to say?”

Ling, across the deck in a cloud of pink bakterons, said, “Oh, oh … no

… they must have divided into factions. Invented warfare amongst themselves! Oh… .”

Harrah stopped sobbing and stood, wide-eyed, on hirs sturdy short legs.

Cal said, still very pleasant, “Seeding 140, show us these Others. Transmit visuals.”

“But if we get close enough to the Others to do that, we will be destroyed!”

Ling said sadly, “It is warfare.”

Deb compressed hirs beautiful lips. Kabil turned away, to gaze out at the stars. Micah said, “Seeding … do you have any historical transmissions of the Others, in your databanks? Send those.”

“Scanning … sending.”

Ling said softly, “We always knew warfare was a possibility for any creations. After all, they have our unrefined DNA, and for millennia …” Hirs fell silent.

“The data is only partial,” Seeding 140 said. “We were nearly destroyed when it was sent to us. But there is one data packet until the last few minutes of life.”

The cheerful, dancing oysters had vanished from the holocube. In their place were the fronds of a tall, thin plant, waving slightly in the thick air. It was stark, unadorned, elemental. A multicellular organism rooted in the rocky ground, doing nothing.

No one on the ship spoke.

The holocube changed perspective, to a wide scan. Now there were whole stands of fronds, acres of them, filling huge sections of the rift. Plant after plant, drab olive green, blowing in the unseen wind.

After the long silence, Seeding 140 said, “Our mother? The Others were not there for ninety-two years. Then they came. They replicate much faster than we do, and we die. Our mother, can you do what is necessary?”

Still no one spoke, until Harrah, frightened, said, “What is it?”

Micah answered, hirs voice clipped and precise. “According to the data packet, it is an aerobic organism, using a process analogous to photosynthesis to create energy, giving off oxygen as a byproduct. The data includes a specimen analysis, broken off very abruptly as if the AI failed. The specimen is non-carbon-based, non-DNA. The energy sources sealed in Seeding 140 are anaerobic.”

Ling said sharply, “Present oxygen content of the rift atmosphere?”

Cal said, “Seven point six two percent.” Hirs paused. “The oxygen created by these … these ‘Others’ is poisoning the seeding.”

“But,” Deb said, bewildered, “why did the original drop include such a thing?”

“It didn’t,” Micah said. “There is no match for this structure in the gene banks. It is not from Earth.”

“Our mother?” Seeding 140 said, over the motionless fronds in the holocube. “Are you still there?”

Disciple Arlbeni, Grid 743.9, 2999: As we approach this millennium marker, rejoice that humanity has passed both beyond superstition and spiritual denial. We have a faith built on physical truth, on living genetics, on human need. We have, at long last, given our souls not to a formless Deity, but to the science of life itself. We are safe, and we are blessed.

Micah said suddenly, “It’s a trick.”

The other adults stared at hirs. Harrah had been hastily reconfigured for sleep. Someone—Ling, most likely—had dissolved the floating baktons and blanked the wall displays, and only the empty transmission field added color to the room. That, and the cold stars beyond.

“Yes,” Micah continued, “a trick. Not malicious, of course. But we programmed them to learn, and they did. They had some seismic event, or some interwarfare, and it made them wary of anything unusual. They learned that the unusual can be deadly. And the most unusual thing they know of is us, set to return at 3000. So they created a transmission program designed to repel us. Xenophobia, in a stimulus-response learning environment. You said it yourself, Ling, the learning components are built on human genes. And we have xenophobia as an evolved survival response!”

Cal jack-knifed across the room. Tension turned hirs ungraceful. “No. That sounds appealing, but nothing we gave Seeding 140 would let them evolve defenses that sophisticated. And there was no seismic event for the internal stimulus.”

Micah said eagerly, “We’re the stimulus! Our anticipated return! Don’t you see … we’re the ‘Others’!”

Kabil said, “But they call us ‘mother’… . They were thrilled to see us. They’re not xenophobic to us.”

Deb spoke so softly the others could barely hear, “Then it’s a computer malfunction. Cosmic bombardment of their sensory equipment. Or at least, of the unit that was ‘dying.’ Malfunctioning before the end. All that sensory data about oxygen poisoning is compromised.”

“Of course!” Ling said. But hirs was always honest. “At least . . . no, compromised data isn’t that coherent, the pieces don’t fit together so well biochemically… .”

“And non-terrestrially,” Cal said, and at the jagged edge in his voice, Micah exploded.

“California, these are not native life! There is no native life in the galaxy except on Earth!”

“I know that, Micah,” Cal said, with dignity. “But I also know this data does not match anything in the d-bees.”

“Then the d-bees are incomplete!”

“Possibly.”

Ling put hirs hands together. They were long, slender hands with very long nails, created just yesterday. I want to grab the new millennium with both hands, Ling had laughed before the party, and hold it firm. “Spores. Panspermia.”

“I won’t listen to this!” Micah said.

“An old theory,” Ling went on, gasping a little. “Seeding 140 said the Others weren’t there for their first hundred years. But if the spores blew in from space on the solar wind and the environment was right for them to germinate—”

Deb said quickly, “Spores aren’t really life. Wherever they came from, they’re not alive.”

“Yes, they are,” said Kabil. “Don’t quibble. They’re alive.”

Micah said loudly, “I’ve given my entire life to the Great Mission. I was on the original drop for this very planet.”

“They’re alive,” Ling said, “and they’re not ours.”

“My entire life!” Micah said. Hirs looked at each of them in turn, hirs face stony, and something terrible glinted behind the beautiful deep-green eyes.

Our mother does not answer. Has our mother gone away?

Our mother would not go away without helping us. It must be that they are still dancing.

We can wait.

“The main thing is Harrah, after all,” Kabil said. Hirs sat slumped on the floor. They had been talking so long.

“A child needs secure knowledge. Purpose. Faith,” Cal said.

Ling said wearily, “A child needs truth.”

“Harrah,” Deb crooned softly. “Harrah, made of all of us, future of our genes, small heart Harrah… .”

“Stop it, Debaron,” Cal said. “Please.”

Micah said, “Those things down there are not real. They are not. Test it, Cal. I’ve said so already. Test it. Send down a probe, try to bring back samples. There’s nothing there.”

“You don’t know that, Micah.”

“I know!” Micah said, and was subtly revitalized. Hirs sprang up. “Test it!”

Ling said, “A probe isn’t necessary. We have the transmitted data

and—”

“Not reliable!” Micah said.

“—and the rising oxygen content. Data from our own sensors.”

“Outgassing!”

“Micah, that’s ridiculous. And a probe—”

“A probe might come back contaminated,” Cal said.

“Don’t risk contamination,” Kabil said suddenly. “Not with Harrah here.”

“Harrah, made of us all… .” Deb had turned hirs back on the rest now, and lay almost curled into a ball, lost in hirs powerful imagination. Deb!

Kabil said, almost pleadingly, to Ling, “Harrah’s safety should come first.”

“Harrah’s safety lies in facing the truth,” Ling said. But hirs was not strong enough to sustain it alone. They were all so close, so knotted together, a family. Knotted by Harrah and by the Great Mission, to which Ling, no less than all the others, had given hirs life.

“Harrah, small heart,” sang Deb.

Kabil said, “It isn’t as if we have proof about these ‘Others.’ Not real proof. We don’t actually know.”

“I know,” Micah said.

Cal looked bleakly at Kabil. “No. And it is wrong to sacrifice a child to a supposition, to a packet of compromised data, to a … a superstition of creations so much less than we are. You know that’s true, even though we none of us ever admit it. But I’m a biologist. The creations are limited DNA, with no ability to self-modify. Also strictly regulated nano, and AI only within careful parameters. Yes, of course they’re life forms deserving respect on their own terms, of course of course I would never deny that—”

“None of us would,” Kabil said.

“—but they’re not us. Not ever us.”

A long silence, broken only by Deb’s singing.

“Leave orbit, Micah,” Cal finally said, “before Harrah wakes up.”

Disciple Arlbeni, Grid 743.9, 2999: We are not gods, never gods, no matter what the powers evolution and technology have given us, and we do not delude ourselves that we are gods, as other cultures have done at other millennia. We are human. Our salvation is that we know it, and do not pretend otherwise.

Our mother? Are you there? We need you to save us from the Others, to do what is necessary. Are you there?

Are you still dancing?

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