The Sunhouse Trap

Originally published in Science Fiction Age, vol 5, num 4.

Ten thousand light years from its home near the center of the galaxy, the Krii ship warped the void of space-time.

When Tabitha was two, her mother changed sex. That didn't bother Tabitha, but her father moved out.

"Will he come back?" she asked. She stood dwarf-like between the Graceland-style columns at the front of her house. Mechanical sheep mowed the lawn.

Mother scratched his new beard, looking pensive. "I don't think so. He's gone to join the Pulaski group mind, like your grandfather did. It's like getting married."

Tabitha already knew what a group mind was, because she'd asked her augment, the part of her brain that was beyond human. It had been implanted when she was one year old.

"Will I marry the Pulaskis someday?"

Her mother smiled. "Maybe you'll marry Richard instead."

Tabitha made a face. "Richard is a boy."

"Boys aren't so bad," her mother said defensively. "I like being one."

Tabitha looked up at the artificial blue sky, where children played in the gravity-free zone around an ansible tower. Richard was probably among them. As always, the bright yellow sun shone directly overhead, and the horizon blurred to infinity in all directions.

"I'm going to talk to Grandfather," she said. She let her augment take over her senses, and her mother vanished.

She found herself in one of the orbit labs, which supervised the transportation of raw materials from the outer worlds to the shell around the sun. The air smelled of chicken soup and ozone, and Chopin's Sonata #2 fought with the hum of machinery. Her grandfather drifted in free fall before a projection showing the rubble that was all that was left of Jupiter.

"Hello, Tabitha," he said, his augment sensing hers.

"'Lo," she said, nodding politely. "Is Father part of you now?"

"We are becoming. It's a process, like building the house for the sun."

"I'm a process, too," she said.

His face crinkled into a smile. "A very pretty process."

"What will you do with Father?"

"Do you know how much longer it will be until the machines finish the Dyson sphere?"

"Thirty years, one hundred twelve days, five hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds," she said, reciting from her augment. "Terrestrial time," she added.

Grandfather nodded. "And then what happens?"

"All the light stays in the house."

"What if someone's watching from outside?"

"They'll see the sun go out."

Her grandfather nodded. "We think someone's watching. Your father will help us find out."

In the real-time of light, the construction of the black stone on the galactic rim had not yet begun. But in the no-time of ansible transmissions, the construction proceeded at a furious pace. The Krii ship drained energy from suns along its path, traversing light years in mere hours of ansible time.

When Tabitha was four, her mother asked her if she liked cats.

"I like them," Tabitha said carefully, "but I don't want to become one."

Her mother shook his head. "Gene-morphing doesn't turn you into an animal. It just gives you some of the characteristics. You can have a cute kitty face without being a cat."

"I like my face the way it is," said Tabitha politely. "Richard has a tail, and it's always getting stepped on."

"You look so drab among the other children. Their parents will think I've taken religious vows."

"I'll explain if anyone asks."

Her mother sighed.

Tabitha looked across the plain, where a gas whale floated over a field of potato-bean plants. Artificial wind blew the crop in slow green waves.

"Grandfather" -- she corrected herself -- "The Pulaski group mind showed me a projection of the A-wave. They think it started at the galactic core."

"What? What's an A-wave?"

"Don't you ever talk with your augment? It's the ansible anomaly. It's..." Her voice trailed off as she decided it would be rude for a four-year old to explain current events to her mother.

"Tabitha," said her mother, looking her straight in the eye. "You're a little girl. You don't need to think all the time -- that's what group minds are for. And trust me, group sex is more fun. Now go play."

"Yes, Mother."

"And don't wait up! I've got another date with Merilee and Zana tonight. Have Kitchen make you something decadent for supper."

Far behind the Krii ship, over a thousand huge spheres orbited in stasis around the black hole. The Krii had been extinct for billions of years, but the collection -- and the collector machine -- remained.

When Tabitha was eight, she escaped from the party where Richard was showing off his new tentacles, and walked all the way to the Pulaski Institute.

Her father sat her down in his chair and showed her an image of the Stone Garden.

"It's pretty," she said. "What is it?"

"The center of the Milky Way, and the answer to the Fermi paradox, which says --"

"I know what the Fermi paradox is," Tabitha interrupted. She quickly studied her father's face to make sure she hadn't offended him. "So the reason no alien civilization has ever contacted us is that they're all here?" Thoughtfully she traced her small finger through the image. "This is the event horizon of the black hole at the center of our galaxy, and the orbiters are Dyson spheres like our own, right? Since each sphere is a different radius, I'd guess that each was created by natives of a different star system."

Her father nodded, waiting expectantly.

She looked at him quizzically. "But our telescopes can't see anything near a black hole, because there's not enough illumination."

"It was captured via ansible, Tabitha."

"But to do that, you'd need an ansible transmitter at the core. My augment says the farthest ansible is less than twenty light years from the sun."

"Who do you believe?" he said with mock gruffness. "Your father or your augment?"

She smiled. "I believe the Pulaski group mind." She continued to trace the image, looking at his face. "Is this a good thing or a bad thing?"

"The garden is dead," he said soberly, "and the A-wave is coming straight toward us."

The Krii had been afraid. But because they'd been the first civilization in the galaxy, it was their privilege to ensure that they were the only one. They built the collector machines to seek out budding civilizations, freeze them in stasis, and imprison them in orbit around the black hole.

By the time Tabitha was sixteen, Richard had changed sex five times, a different one each time. Tabitha's mother had gene-morphed to become sexless, and taken up aromatherapy as a hobby. Her short-cropped hair was the color of snow.

Mother sat in the center of the house gravity field, dipping a brush into tiny scent bottles and painting the contents on each fingernail. It sniffed the results critically.

"What do you think?" asked Mother, holding its hand out to Tabitha.

"Smells like lilacs and isopropyl alcohol and... tofu?"

Mother rolled its eyes. "At least you got the lilacs right." It leaned over to look at what Tabitha was doing. "Aren't you a little old to be playing with model rocket ships?"

The pieces floated in the air as Tabitha manipulated them with her augment.

"It's a prototype of the probe they'll send out to look at the A-wave front," she explained. "The Takahara group mind has a theory for a faster-than-light drive." Tabitha floated two pieces toward Mother with her augment. "That one's a normal antimatter containment pod, and that one's the Takahara drive -- if they can get it to work."

Mother sniffed. "Well, of course it doesn't work. It doesn't even smell right."

The Krii ship had watched races evolve, different stages in different order. Each invented new ways to harness energy, new ways to travel. And ultimately, each discovered the ansible, the tripwire of its doom.

By Tabitha's thirty-second birthday, the Dyson sphere was complete, but part of it was already being disassembled to construct escape arks. Tabitha had a new augment that could solve N-body orbital problems a million times faster than her old one. Mother had become a red-headed female and cloned herself.

"We can't understand why you won't do it," said Mothers. "One of us stays here and the other goes to the Centauri system. It's win-win either way. Until the launch, we do everything together to maintain the nature-nurture match: identical twins." They nodded in unison.

"Centauri isn't like Sol, Mothers. It's a trinary system, so it can't be Dysoned. Whoever goes there will be living in shield-domes on small planetoids."

"Richard's going," purred Mothers seductively. "Two of them, a man and a woman. And two Richards will stay here."

"Good for Richard," said Tabitha. "He always kept up with the trends."

"Well, if there's one thing you need, Tabitha, it's to spend more time on your love life. What happened to the last man we set you up with, that Adolph fellow?"

"The one who tried to tattoo my breasts on our first -- and only -- date?"

"You had a good time, didn't you?"

Tabitha shook her head.

"What will you do?" said Mothers. "You don't want to get cloned, and you don't want to join the Centauri cruise."

"I'm going to join the Pulaski group mind. The Takahara probe is well on its way, and the Pulaskis want another perspective on analyzing the data it returns."

Mothers sighed. "You think too much. Haven't we talked to you about that?"

The Krii ship saw the ansible-spark cross the wave front of its defense. The spark was superluminal, a space-time machine from the rim. For an instant, the spark continued traveling faster than light, then exploded. The collector machine left the debris far behind it.

"You're leaving me?" said Mother. Her mouth hung open in disbelief.

Mother had redecorated the house as a Mongolian yurt, and dissonant bleating came from holographic goats.

Tabitha was sixty-four, nearing the prime of her life. It occurred to her that, as part of the group mind, she/it had already left Mother twice before: once as husband and once as father.

"I've been chosen to pilot one of the Takahara ships in the attack against the Stone Collector," she explained. "They need a group mind intimately familiar with our knowledge of the Stone Collector and ansible theory, but strong enough to survive. I'll go as an extension of the Pulaski group mind, augment-linked by ansible."

"When will you be back?"

"In twenty-four years, seventy-five days, local time. Of course, I'll be younger when I get back, due to time-reversal."

"I'll be an old woman ..." Mother's voice trailed off.

"Nonsense, Mother. You’ll be anything you want." She gently kissed her mother-wife-daughter on the cheek. "See you when I get back."

The Krii ship hadn't changed in billions of years. It remembered battles won, never lost. Yet somehow, its own world had died. One by one, so had its fellow collector machines. But the order to protect remained.

By the time the fleet neared the A-wave front, FTL time distortion had reduced Tabitha's age to thirty-two. Her augment had kept her mind from regressing, and ansible-updated nanomachines had done the same for equipment, including Tabitha's augment. Her ship was the last in the chain of eight.

From Sol, Father's thoughts joined hers: "The Takaharas will get enough honor as it is," he grumbled. "They should have let all the ships release disassemblers at once."

"The Pulaskis have a long tradition of sweeping up after the generals," answered a thought from her grandfather. "But this time, everyone will watch how we hold the broom."

"Quiet," said Tabitha. "I need to concentrate." Then she wondered if she'd already said that, or was planning to. The time distortion and updates from the augment provided a constant buzz of confusion.

The lead Takahara ships were broadcasting data from the A-wave front, which spread across ten light years. The first probe, years before, had made the mistake of flying into the center of the wave and been destroyed instantly. This fleet's line was a wide spiral.

"One and two, passing through the wave," said a Takahara voice.

The two ships vanished. The wave swallowed their ansible signatures.

"Did they release disassemblers?" asked the Takahara mind from Sol.

"No sign," said a mind from another ship. "They may have released behind the front."

"Ships three and four, release on contact," ordered the Takahara mind.

"Coming up ... Now!"

Both ships vanished.

"Anything on scan?"

"They must have released too late," someone offered.

"But what happened to the ships?!"

Tabitha fought to maintain a train of thought and analyze the data.

"Tabitha," asked the Pulaski mind, "what do you see?"

"See? Nothing. Light can't keep up."

"Five and six, release before contact."

"Now?"

"Now!"

Tabitha's augment informed her of the release, hundreds of miniature Takahara drives launching toward the wave. Then the ships vanished, along with the disassemblers.

"What do we do?" asked Tabitha's counterpart in ship seven.

"I don't know. I can't think. I can't think at all!"

"We're thinking for you," said the Pulaski mind.

"But you don't have a plan!"

"Release now," said the Takahara mind.

The approaching A-wave filled the sensors. Tabitha had a fleeting thought, which faded in the time stream. Or maybe she was going to have a thought. Her augment selected the release switch for her. All she had to do was allow it. Ship seven released disassemblers.

"Eight! Release now!"

"I need to think," said Tabitha. She selected the emergency shutdown switch for the Takahara drive.

"Tabitha! What are you doing?!"

She shut down.

Seven ansible-sparks crossed the wave front. Traveling faster than light, each was abruptly cut off from its command center on the rim, which had kept it from unraveling in time. As the Krii ship watched, parts of each ship regressed to before its completion date. Antimatter containment fields receded to before turn-on, contents streaming free to combine with normal matter.

Tabitha's ship dropped into real-time.

The wave passed through her. And for the first time since leaving solar orbit, she could think clearly. There was no touch of the Pulaski group mind, no update instructions from her augment. Tabitha sighed in relief.

She thought a message to the group mind: "I'm on the other side of the wave."

There was no answering thought, only peace and quiet. She heard her own restful breathing.

Stars shone all around, proof positive that she was in real-time. She saw sparkles of light that were not stars: dispersing clouds of matter and antimatter, annihilating each other atom by atom. Sensors showed the receding A-wave, still heading toward Sol.

In the other direction, something rushed toward her silently from the galactic core. In the blink of an eye, it sped past: a false image of the Stone Collector, light-delayed. A minute later, another passed, and then another. Tabitha realized the alien drive was nothing like the Takahara drive. It dipped in and out of real-time like a wave, leaving a long trail of ghosts behind.

"Let's see what you look like," she whispered.

Listening to Strauss's Thus Spake Zarathustra, she played back the images in slow motion. The Stone Collector ship was tinier than she expected, perhaps fifty kilometers long. Whatever had happened to the ships of her fleet, they hadn't collided with it.

Tabitha studied the Stone Collector images carefully. There was still time to defeat it. She took a deep breath and consulted her augment.

Tabitha's mother walked -- something she wasn't accustomed to doing -- up to the front door of the Pulaski Institute and blinked in the flash of its ID scanner. The delicate fairy wings growing from her shoulders prevented her from wearing her jet pack. After waiting a few seconds, she pounded on the ornate iron doors with both fists.

The doors creaked apart a minute later. Her ex-husband stood before her.

"Where's my daughter?" she shouted.

He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated and swallowed. "I already told you, we don't think she survived. We lost contact with all the ships, and --"

"But you have her. She's part of the Pulaski mind. You have her and I don't!" She wiped away a tear that had started down one cheek.

He shook his head. "A group mind doesn't work that way. We work together, think together, but when one of us dies ..."

Her father appeared in the doorway.

"Pumpkin, you have to accept that she's gone. She tried her best and we --"

"Don't call me Pumpkin! I'm ninety-two years old and I won't be called Pumpkin anymore." She began to cry. "I told her. I told her to clone herself."

Her ex-husband reached out and pulled her toward him, hugging her.

"Ouch!" She winced. "Careful with my wings!"

Tabitha, slowly gaining on the Stone Collector, had regressed to sixteen. The ansible transmissions from Earth were still blocked. But from the other direction, the computer she'd left behind sent update instructions via ansible to her augment and the nanomachines. She longed for a time when she could think, without the disorientation of time reversal and re-teaching from her augment.

The trailing edge of the A-wave loomed before her. In her own voice, the computer left behind told her where the alien ship was, exactly when it was blinking in and out of real-time.

"Can you scratch for fleas?" asked Tabitha. She launched the first disassembler.

One by one, each time the Stone Collector dropped into real-time, she released another, until there were no more.

She followed, sending ansible updates to the disassemblers.

The malfunctions were insignificant: a sensor failure here, a minor hull breach there. Slowly they added up. By the time the Krii ship sought out a star system to mine raw materials for repairs, there were thousands of malfunctions. By the time it found a planet, there were millions.

It never reached orbit around the planet. Billions of disassemblers had converted all the ship's mass into a swarm of their own kind. Then, their job complete, they turned themselves off.

When Tabitha returned to the house around the sun, she was only two. Between the immature body and space legs, she felt embarrassingly wobbly. But when the President of the Sphere bent down in all his dignity to pin the Order of the Galaxy medal on her, the crowd went wild. Tabitha's father had to read her speech for her, because of the tears in her eyes.

Afterward, her father and grandfather took her in the Institute's silver aircar to Mother's house. The mechanical sheep had been replaced by electronic locusts, and there wasn't a blade of grass in sight.

"Stay as long as you like," said her father after carrying her suitcase to the front door. "If anyone in history ever deserved a vacation from a group mind..." He smiled and kissed her on the cheek, then turned back toward the aircar.

She had to jump up to reach the heavy brass knocker, and for all her effort, it made only a muffled clunk.

After a minute, the door swung open. Mother greeted her with a yelp of joy. There was someone else with her: a second head grew from the top of her torso. And she had gene-morphed to a biological sixteen.

"Richard?" said Tabitha. She blinked to be sure.

"We got married," said Mother, smiling at his head beside hers. His mouth twitched from a wire-ecstasy implant in the center of his forehead.

"Do you think like a group mind now?" asked Tabitha.

"Oh, no!" said Mother. "No thinking. But being a hermaphrodite has other advantages." She playfully pinched Richard's cheek.

There was a whoop from Tabitha's old room, and the door dilated. Mother and Richard's heads turned in unison.

Four small children rushed through the opening, and a barrage of gravity-neutralizer arrows flew through the air toward Tabitha and Mother.

As Tabitha and Mother floated toward the ceiling, Mother said, "Aren't they cute? We cloned them so you'd have playmates."

Staring down, Tabitha saw that each child was a two-year old Richard. They began disassembling her suitcase, looking for presents.

"And we fixed up your room so you can move right back in. It's going to be wonderful!"

Her heart pounding, Tabitha looked out the window and saw that the aircar hadn't left yet; there was still time. She took a deep breath and consulted her augment.