Falcon/Adam was suspended in whiteness.
After a timeless time, upon the face of that formless white, a regularity imposed itself. A pattern of lines. The lines themselves thickened. Where they intersected, the lines delineated white squares. The lines were a dark grey, the squares containing a curious sense of depth. And the distribution of whiteness across their faces was not uniform. It was thicker along two of the adjoining lines, thinner on the opposing pair.
Beyond the squares, seen through them, stood a further, more distant whiteness.
The regularity sharpened. The grey dividing lines formed into the iron bars of a many-paned window . . .
Howard smeared his dressing gown sleeve across a cluster of panes in the cottage’s window, wiping away the condensation. Each little square of glass had gained a precise L-shaped frosting of snow on the outside, where it had gathered on the lower edge and in one corner. There had been flurries of snow over the preceding days, but nothing as heavy as this overnight fall. And it had come in right on schedule, a seasonal gift from the Global Weather Secretariat.
The garden Howard knew was transformed. It seemed wider and longer from the hedges on either side to the sawtooth fence at the end of the gently sloping lawn, and a ridge of snow lay on the fence, neat as the decoration on a birthday cake. It all looked so cold and still, so inviting and mysterious.
And the sky above the fence and hedges was clear, cloudless, shot through at this still-early hour with a delicate pale-rose pink. Howard looked at the sky for a long time, wondering what it would be like to be above the Earth, surrounded by nothing but air. It would be cold up there, but he’d put up with that for the freedom of flight.
Yet here in the cottage it was snug and warm. Howard had come down from his bedroom to find that his mother was up already, baking bread. She liked the old ways of doing things. His father had prepared the fire in the parlour hearth, and now it was crackling and hissing. On the mantle over the hearth, one of a collection of ornaments and souvenirs, stood a clumsily assembled model on a clear plastic stand: a jet-black cube with Howard Falcon Junior clumsily painted on one corner.
Howard found his favourite toy, and set it on the windowsill so it could see the snow too. The golden robot was a complicated thing, despite its antique radio-age appearance. It had been a gift on his eleventh birthday, only a couple of months earlier. He knew that it had cost his parents dearly to buy it for him.
Now they stood side by side together, boy and robot, looking out of the window. The robot had been small once, a toy that had to stand on the sill to see through the window. Oddly, the robot now came up to Howard’s shoulders.
That was not even the strangest thing. The strangest thing was to be having thoughts at all.
Howard Falcon tried to speak. His voice was piping and boyish, but recognisably his own. “This is . . .”
“Odd?” the robot asked, turning its clunky angular head to address the boy. “I’ll say. Especially as I seem to be sharing in your delusion.”
“What delusion? . . . Oh. I see.”
“We were dying.”
“Coming apart. Losing coherence. What happened?” Falcon turned his hand slowly, the fine hairs catching the golden flicker of the hearth. He had skin again. Skin and bones and sinews, an arm sticking out of a dressing gown sleeve. Falcon was torn between the view through the paned window, and a fascinated inspection of his own hand and wrist.
None of this could be real.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Adam said, his voice a buzzing modulation that was nonetheless perfectly clear to Falcon. “Except that if someone wished to dig into your memories, the moment of our dissolution—when our architecture was most exposed—would have been the ideal opportunity. Perhaps the gentleman will be able to shed some light on matters.”
“What gentleman?”
The robot swivelled its head. “The one outside in the snow. The one beckoning to us.”
A snowman stood in the garden beyond the window. Falcon had not noticed him until now, but he supposed that the snowman had been there all along, waiting. And he was indeed inviting them outside, his twig-thin arms waving in encouragement.
“It would seem rude to ignore him,” Falcon said.
“Indeed.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Falcon went to the cupboard under the stairs and—just as he’d expected—found a scarf. He swung it around his throat, tightened the cord on his dressing gown, and led the robot out into the garden.
Beyond the cottage, the cold reached through his slippers to his feet, and the chill air pricked at his senses. Each breath was an icy intoxication, making him feel even more alive.
Above them was a cloudless pink sky.
He was no longer Falcon the cyborg, after centuries. He felt as if he had been released from an enclosing pressure suit. It was good to be living, even in illusion. If this was merely a dream, Falcon thought, a last pattern of impressions generated by a dying mind, it was still a blessing not to feel pain, not to know fear.
Yet there was still apprehension. It still took him an effort of will to face the snowman.
The figure waited in the snow. But the snowman’s form had undergone a profound alteration while they were leaving the cottage. Instead of being a lumpy, misshapen approximation to a man, the snowman had become fully anthropomorphic. The white figure stood on well-defined legs, the relative sizes of its body, head and limbs entirely in proportion. Gone were its twigs-for-arms; gone were its carrot nose and button eyes. Save for the whiteness of its skin, and the softness of its outlines—it had no features, no distinct musculature or gender—it could have been a statue, a marble figure from classical antiquity.
It was still waving them closer.
Falcon and the robot approached the silently beckoning form. Falcon’s apprehension had sharpened to dread, but he could not turn back.
He summoned the nerve to speak. “Well, you’re a better snowman than any I ever made. I never had the patience . . . Who are you?”
The snowman answered, “Who do you think?” His voice was deep. There was amusement in it, but also a certain lofty condescension.
“A representative of the inhabitants of Jupiter Within,” Falcon said. “Whatever you call yourselves.”
“You are mistaken.”
Adam said, from Falcon’s side, “Whoever you are, I should like to know where we are. We have long posited the existence of a purposeful technological culture in Jupiter Within. The assaults on our cities were proof enough of that. Now, I suspect a capability of—space-metric engineering. Something akin to a wormhole. Remember, Falcon, my accelerometers recorded a journey incompatible with our still being inside Jupiter, let alone within the core . . .”
“Why do you imagine you are anywhere, little Machine?”
“Because we are having a conversation,” Adam replied, with a defiance that drew some admiration from Falcon. “That fact sets certain existential parameters. Even if we are disembodied intelligences our minds are running in some sort of emulation. Any such emulation must be physically grounded on some substrate, and there must be a source of power . . .”
The snowman nodded its faceless white bulb of a head. “Good, good. I applaud clear thinking. Howard Falcon: would it surprise you to hear that we have already spoken? Or that Adam and I know each other intimately? As well we should, given that Adam helped shape me for the mission that made my name—”
“Orpheus,” Falcon said, with a shiver of awe that had nothing to do with the cold. “My God. You survived.”
“I endured—call it that. As you endure. I passed into the realm of those you would wish to know, those you would wish to understand. Call them the First Jovians. I met them, and they altered me so that I might survive and learn. Learn and adapt, learn and evolve. Becoming more than the thing I once was. More than you.”
“You have been watching us,” Falcon said slowly. “You were seen in human spaces—your avatar. I saw you. In the ruins of our worlds.”
“And in our cities too,” Adam said now. “A representation of the primitive form of Orpheus.”
“You never told us that,” Falcon said, looking at him.
Adam made a creaking shrug. “We were at war, remember. Besides, you never asked.”
“Yes, I was sent to watch you,” said the snowman. “Once your activities became . . . obvious. Sufficiently large-scale.”
“Like the dismantling of Mercury,” Falcon said dryly.
“Quite. Perturbations on a planetary scale. Indeed, by then you had already had the audacity to send me, a probe, down into Jupiter Within. I was a frail thing, and I was cherished by those much greater than me. Since then my purpose has been to help them interpret what I see, understand what you are doing.”
Adam nodded, his metal neck creaking. “I am glad you were preserved, Orpheus. The intended final upload of your personality back to Amalthea was never achieved. You were thought lost. You did not deserve that.”
“Can you take us to . . . them?” Falcon asked.
The snowman made a laugh—not a kindly laugh, but one born from pity and no small measure of contempt. “That will not be possible. I am the bridge by which you shall achieve what narrow comprehension is possible for you. The First Jovians speak through me, and I distil their thoughts and utterances into a form compatible with the limits of your understanding. Ask for no more than this.”
“We’re entitled to ask whatever we like,” Falcon said. “And I resent being patronised. You were made by us, for a purpose—and a bold one, a voyage of science and exploration. And now you must have a purpose in bringing us here.”
“Your physical identities no longer exist in the forms you once knew. But you are not dead. And you still have responsibilities.”
“How can you know us so well?” Adam asked the snowman.
“You are as glass to me. I see your enmities. Your jealousies and grudges. Your endless desire for vengeance against each other.”
“Fine,” Falcon said. “Then you’ll know that Adam and I acted together to defend the Machines against a human weapon. We went deep into Jupiter, trying to prevent a logical-agent weapon from spreading. We sacrificed ourselves.”
“And your point?”
“That our intentions are honourable. In fact, I only came to Jupiter in the hope of averting a larger catastrophe—the use of the Io weapon. Do you know of that?”
“How could I not? But the fate of Io is utterly irrelevant.” The snowman motioned past them, to the cottage. “We shall continue our discussion indoors.”
* * * *
Falcon and the Machine turned around and retraced their footsteps back to the door, the snowman following them. From outside, the windows glowed with an inviting, golden light. Falcon’s simulated heart ached with an almost unbearable longing for home and the comforts of childhood. He knew that this was a fiction woven from his memories, no substitute for the real thing, but the more real it seemed, the crueller the illusion.
They stepped into a bubble of warmth. Falcon closed the door, latching it tight even as wisps of snow curled between the door and its frame. There was no sign of his parents, he noticed, with a pang of loss. He hadn’t even spoken to his mother, glimpsed earlier in the kitchen . . .
* * * *
The snowman ushered them into the parlour. The hearth was still glowing, but the roar and crackle had gone out of the fire. Some barely remembered instinct caused Falcon to grasp the wrought-iron poker and prod the fire back into life, rummaging through the coals and embers until they sparked and flamed.
The snowman extended a hand. “Come. Sit with me.”
* * * *
“Aren’t you concerned about melting?” Falcon asked, easing into one of the chairs.
“Good point. A crack in the verisimilitude? But actually melting is the least of my concerns.” The snowman’s hands were like fingerless mittens, now linked together in its lap. Its white skin glistened and sparkled but showed no other sign of being affected by the fire. “Our environment, were you able to perceive it in its true nature, would be . . . confusing for you. Confusing and upsetting. Hence this simulacrum. Is it acceptable to you?”
“Would you care if it wasn’t?” Falcon asked.
“I do not wish you to be distressed. Given that we are inside the sun.”
Falcon wondered if he had misheard.
Adam leaned forward. His feet did not quite reach the carpet, lending him the comical look of a mechanical teddy bear propped up in a chair. “How can we be inside the sun?”
“Come, Adam, you have worked some of this out at least. If metric engineering is sufficient to open a wormhole inside Jupiter, constructing a redoubt inside a star is scarcely more challenging. What is Jupiter but a failed embryo star, lacking the mass to achieve fusion?” Something in the snowman’s demeanour seemed to soften. “You will forgive my earlier tone. I confess I struggle to find the right balance in my dealings with you. When you stand between gods and men, it is easy to assume a certain . . . haughtiness. But even I am as nothing to them—a mere mouthpiece.” The snowman nodded at the fire. “Stir it again, if you would.”
Falcon leaned from his chair to grasp the poker. But as his fingers closed around the iron, he hesitated. “Why? What does it matter if I do or don’t? This isn’t real. You’re manipulating our perceptions at such a deep level you can decide for yourself how cold or warm we feel.”
“I thought a second demonstration of your capabilities would serve some benefit,” the snowman said. “But in truth, once was probably sufficient. They cannot have failed to notice.”
“Notice what?” Falcon asked. “What demonstration? What capabilities?”
Adam snapped, “And who cannot have ‘failed to notice’?”
“Your kind. Humans and Machines. Who will have noticed that you have interfered with the proper functioning of your star. The fire in the hearth is a symbolic representation. In reality, when you stirred the coals earlier, you were perturbing the very fusion reactions which sustain your sun—the fire that warms the worlds which orbit it.”
Falcon stared down at his hand, at the fingers that still clasped the poker, with a shudder of horror. As if he suddenly found himself holding a snake. “That isn’t possible.”
“By your measure of things, but not by theirs. Think of the poker as the control system, the user interface, of a chain of machinery largely beyond your comprehension. When you prod the fire, you make your star skip a few nuclear heartbeats. A complete cessation of fusion, for a few instants.”
Adam was still leaning forward, his hands on the rests of his chair. “This will have a profound effect on the hydrodynamic stability of the stellar envelope.”
“That is correct. The sudden absence of photon pressure from the core will cause a progressive collapse and rebound of the sun’s internal structure. The stellar equivalent of a hiccough. The effect is transient, but it will create a powerful mass ejection when the rebound reaches the surface.”
“Which will come in about . . . thirty thousand years?” Adam asked.
“That is correct.”
Falcon, very cautiously, eased his hand away from the poker. “I don’t understand. Why so long?”
“Simple plasma dynamics,” Adam whispered. “The sun is very opaque, to light at least. After a photon has been produced by a fusion reaction in the core of the sun, it takes it thirty thousand years to fight its way out to the surface. The sunlight that warms your face now began its journey from the stellar interior somewhere around the time of the Cro-Magnons.”
“Adam speaks correctly,” the snowman said. “Nothing can quickly penetrate the bulk of the sun’s mass—”
“Except neutrinos,” Adam stated.
The snowman raised a mitten, acknowledging the robot’s point. “Except neutrinos. Created by the fusion processes in the heart of the sun. Instead of thirty thousand years, it takes them only two seconds to battle through the same density of matter. That ceaseless squall of subatomic particles has just had an interruption, as if a great door slammed shut in the furnace of the sun, only to reopen a moment later. And they will have noticed: astronomers, monitors of solar weather—those who observe such phenomena, whether human or Machine.”
Falcon wryly remembered Kalindy Bhaskar’s Ice Orchestrion, that neutrino-sensitive instrument of ice in Antarctica. Surely that could no longer exist; if it did, he imagined it would be sounding a few sour notes.
“And in thirty thousand years?” he asked now.
“There will be a disturbance. But your descendants will know that it is on its way. They will have time to prepare, time to make arrangements.”
Falcon’s horror had turned to revulsion. “This is monstrous. To perturb the sun, merely to make—what, a gesture?”
“Any more monstrous than to destroy worlds to win a war? One of you is human—or was. One of you is a Machine—or was. Do either of you shrug off the moral burden of the forms you once assumed?” The snowman turned its blank and imperious face. “Falcon, you helped the Machines gain their liberty from human control. But at the destruction of Earth—in those final moments, you would have gladly annihilated them, your very words conveyed such a threat, if the choice had been yours. If it had been possible, had you been granted the means, in the full fury of that moment—would you have had the moral strength to resist?”
Falcon searched deep inside himself. He knew better than to lie. “I can’t be sure.”
“And now your people plan to smash Jupiter itself, or at least its upper atmosphere, in order to gain some advantage over your foe. And you.” The snowman turned to Adam now. “Falcon allowed you Machines sentience and the means to pursue your own destiny. Yet you could not bring yourselves to live in lasting peace. Greed overcame you—a very human flaw, by the way. When your greed was challenged, you punished the humans by stealing their birth world. You, Adam, were a significant contributor to the decision process that led to that terrible act. What was the deeper meaning? Was it all revenge over the one you called ‘Father’? Do you retain that much of the flawed creatures who made you?”
Adam turned away.
“And now, between the two of you, you prosecute a war which, in the end, will threaten every remaining ecological niche in the solar system. Do not think yourself blameless, either of you.”
Falcon looked at Adam; neither of them spoke.
The snowman paused and extended his hands, palms raised to the warming hearth. “However—here you are, together. Man and Machine. The First Jovians had considered dealing with you two as they had dealt with the previous ambassadors from the Machines—that is, by swatting you away. But here, by some chance, fortuitously, were the two of you, representatives of both realms, tumbling down, down into the dark, intertwined. So I was sent to . . . inspect you. Neither of you is without some blemish. But by the same token, neither is without the courage or the willingness to set aside old prejudices. Still, I was stirred by your decision to proceed with self-sacrifice and cooperation. It gave me encouragement. It gave me an opportunity.”
“To do what?” Falcon asked.
“To petition those who stand above me. To plead with the First Jovians to grant you a second chance.
“The Io weapon is the final straw, you see. By their reckoning it is an almost unbearably primitive weapon, conceptually no more advanced than a bone club—but it marks a threshold. You hurl worlds at your enemy, as once your ape predecessors beat each others’ brains out with clubs of bone, and with barely more sophisticated reasoning behind the act.
“And in the next stage of your development, you humans, you Machines—you will begin to meddle with the fundamental properties of matter, of spacetime. The idea of such energies being deployed in an unending, ever-escalating war—well.” The snowman settled his hands back into his lap. “Even then you would have been no more than a nuisance. But if a nuisance must be dealt with, then the sooner the better. Their preferred solution was extinction. They have the means, as I am sure I do not need to demonstrate.”
“And now?” Adam asked.
“You have been granted a stay of execution. Contingent, I should add, on the outcome of the next few hours or days. The Io weapon must not be used.”
“They’re determined,” Falcon said. “The Springer-Soames. The military government.”
“Now you have a chance to argue them out of it,” the snowman answered. And he gestured at the fire, and the poker set beside it.