Macroscope

“It isn’t for feedback. Not that kind. These civilizations are publishing for posterity. They don’t need to worry about greatness in their own time or stellar system; they know what they have. But greatness for the ages, measured against the competition of the universe — that’s something that only the broadcasting can achieve for them. It’s their way of proving that they have not evolved in vain. They have left the universe richer than they found it.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” she said dubiously.

“Maybe you have to be an artist at heart to feel it,” Ivo said. “I’d like nothing better than to leave a monument like that after me. Knowledge — what better way can you imagine than that?”

“I’m no artist,” Groton said, “but I feel it. Sometimes I am sick at heart, to think that when I pass from this existence no one besides my immediate acquaintances will miss me. That I will die without having made my mark.” Ivo nodded agreement.

“Whatever for?” Beatryx asked, sounding a little like Afra. “There is nothing wrong with your life, and you don’t need friends after you’re gone.”

“Must be a sexual difference, too,” Groton remarked, not put out. “Every so often my wife pops up with something I never suspected she’d say. I wonder, in this case, whether it is because men are generally the active ones, while women are passive? A woman doesn’t feel the need to do anything.” Both women glared at him.

“Whatever it is, it extends to culture too,” Ivo said. The joint distaff gaze turned on him. “The space-cultures,” he explained quickly. “At least, the ones that advertise. It’s as impressive a display as I have ever dreamed of.”

“But can it get us away from that UN laser?” Afra’s mind never seemed to stray far from practicalities.

“Yes. Several stations carry high-acceleration adaptors. But the intergalactic program has the only one we can use now. We don’t have facilities for the others.”

“One is enough,” Afra said.

“But it’s rough. It’s biological.”

“Suspended animation? I suppose if we were frozen or immersed in protective fluid—”

“We don’t have a proper freezer, or refrigerated storage tanks,” Groton said. “We can’t just hand bodies out the airlock for presto stasis. And who would bring us all out of it, when the time came? Though I suppose I could adapt a timer, or set the computer to tap the first shoulder.”

“No freezing, no tanks,” Ivo said. “No fancy equipment. All it takes is a little time and a clean basin.”

Afra looked at him suspiciously, but did not comment.

“What are you going to do — melt us down?” Groton.

“Yes.”

“That was intended to be humorous, son.”

“It’s still the truth. We’ll all have to melt down into protoplasm. In that state we can survive about as much acceleration as Joseph can deliver, for as long as we need. You see, the trouble with our present bodies is that we have a skeletal structure, and functioning organs, and all kinds of processes that can be fouled up by a simple gravitic overload. In a stable situation there is no substitute for our present form, of course: I’m not denigrating it. But as protoplasm we are almost invulnerable, because there isn’t any substantial structure beyond the molecular, or at least beyond the cellular. Liquid can take almost anything.”

“Except pouring or splashing or boiling or polluting,” Afra said distastefully.

“Methinks the cure is worse than the UN,” Groton mumbled. “I don’t frankly fancy myself as a bowl of cream or soft pudding.”

“I said it was rough. But the technique is guaranteed.”

“By a culture three million years defunct?” Afra asked.

“I’m not sure it’s dead, or that far away. It might be one million — or six.”

“That makes me feel ever so much better!”

“Well, I guess it’s take it or leave it,” Ivo said. “I’ll have to show it to you in the macroscope, then you can decide. That’s the only way you can be keyed in to the technique. I can’t explain it.”

“Now we have to brave the destroyer too,” Afra said. “All in a day’s work, I suppose.”

“Hold on here,” Groton said. “Are you serious? About us dissolving into jelly? I just can’t quite buy that, fogyish as I may be.”

“I’m serious. Its advantage over the other processes is that it eliminates complicated equipment. Any creature can do it, once shown how, and guided by the program. All you need is a secure container for the fluid, so it doesn’t leak away or get contaminated, as Afra pointed out. Otherwise, it’s completely biologic.”

“Very neat, I admit,” Afra said tightly. “How about a demonstration?”

“I’ll be happy to run through it for you. But I think you should learn the tuning-in technique first, just in case. I mean, how to find the station and avoid the destroyer.”

“If it doesn’t work, we hardly need the information!” Afra pointed out.

“Exactly how are we going to get around the destroyer impulse,” Groton asked. “Individually or en masse?”

“I — know the route, now. I can lead you to the station one at a time, and bypass the destroyer, if you let me — do the driving. I can’t explain how, but I know I can do it.”

Groton and Afra both shook their heads, not trusting it. They might differ on astrology, but they had lived with the knowledge of the destroyer longer than he had, and shared a deep distrust of it.

“I will go with you,” Beatryx said suddenly. “I know you can do it, Ivo.”

“No!” Groton exclaimed immediately.

Beatryx looked at him, unfazed. “But I’m not in danger from it, am I? If I get caught it won’t touch me; and if I don’t, it will prove Ivo knows the way.”

Groton and Afra exchanged helpless glances. She was right, and showed a common sense that shamed them both — but a surprising courage underlay it.

Brad had said something about a normal IQ being no dishonor. Brad had known.

Groton looked tense and uncomfortable as Beatryx do

He took her in, sliding delicately around the destroyer with less of the prior horror and finishing at the surface of the galactic stream of communications.

“Oh, Ivo,” she exclaimed, her voice passing back into the physical world and making a V-turn to reach him down his azimuth. “I see it, I see it! Like a giant rainbow stretching across all the stars. What a wonderful thing!”

And he guided her down, seeking the particular perfume, the essential music, on through the splendor of meaning/color, to the series of concepts that spoke of the very substance of life.

The patterns of import opened up, similar at first to those of the destroyer, but subtly divergent and far more sophisticated. Instead of reaching into a hammer-force totality, these delved into a specific refinement of knowledge — a subsection of the tremendous display of information available through this single broadcast. Ivo knew the way, and he took her in as though walking hand in hand down the hall of a mighty university, selecting that lone aspect of education that offered immediate physical salvation.

“But the other doors!” she cried, near/distant. “So many marvelous—”

He too regretted that they could not spend an eternity within this macronic citadel of information. This might be merely one of a hundred thousand broadcasts available — the number began to suggest itself as he grasped more nearly the scope of the broadcast range — yet it might have in itself another hundred thousand subchambers of learning. University? It was an intergalactic educational complex of almost incomprehensible vastness. Yet they, in their grossly material imperatives, had to restrict themselves to the tiniest fragment, ignoring all the rest. They were hardly worthy.

The microcosm of biophysical chemistry: and it was as though they stood within a vat of protoplasm, able to experience its qualities while remaining apart from its reality. Vaguely spherical, it pulsed with its multiple internal processes, held together by a sandwichlike plasma membrane. It seemed at first to be a simple bag of proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and metal ions, the whole with a neutral pH. But it was more than that, and more than physical.