yet we could find nothing, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. There are an estimated 50 to 100 million intelligent species scattered through our Galaxy, and perhaps a thousand times that number that have existed during the past billion years, but which now are extinct. Many, though by no means all, of these have entries in the EG. Technic species that discover the EG and learn how to tap in, sometimes, though not always, list themselves. Atechnic species—marine organisms that have never discovered fire and metal smelting, for instance—or the more inwardly focused species who have turned their backs on space travel are often described by others who encounter them.
For a billion years—as long as multicellular life has existed on Earth—the Encyclopedia Galactica has grown in both size and complexity, with millions of separate channels, nested frequencies, and deep-heterodyned polylogues. Lots of channels we can’t even access yet; we’re certain there are neutrino channels, for instance, but we don’t know how to read them. When we discovered the local node at Sirius, just 8.6 light years from Earth, we swiftly decided that we needed friendly native guides to lead us through the data jungles.
We would have copies of small parts of the EG with us at GJ 1214, as much as could be accommodated by the Haldane’s sizeable quantum computer storage. We’re still working out how the EG is organized, but we think it includes data on all nearby stars in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus, which is where GJ 1214 is located in the night sky. With luck, we’d scooped up the still-hidden entry on Abyssworld along with known nearby stars in that region—70 and 36 Ophiuchi, Sabik, Raselhague, and others—and our AIs could be hacking through the jungle while we worked.
Eventually the briefing ended—a lot of talk with no surprises—and I went back to work. I was working in the Clymer’s main sick bay that week, which meant the usual shipboard morning routine of sick call, screening Marines and naval personnel who were showing up with problems ranging from colds to an eye infection to a full-blown case of pneumonia. The pneumonia actually was easier to treat than the colds. Despite our much-vaunted advances in medical technology over the past couple of centuries, the collection of minor infections and immune-system failures known as “the common cold” is still tough to treat other than purely symptomatically. Rather than being a single malady, the complaint we call a cold can be caused by any of some two hundred different viruses. The rhinovirus associated with the majority of colds alone has ninety-nine serotypes. That makes it tough to program an injection of nanobots to go in and kill the viruses, and the preferred treatment remains taking care of the symptoms rather than the cause.
There were an unusual number of colds this morning, though, so I pulled some nasopharyngeal samples and sent them up to the lab for a full serotypal workup. We often had these little micro epidemics running their course of the ship when we were in port. Sailors and Marines went ashore on liberty, of course—even taking the elevator down-El to Earth—and they were exposed to bugs they wouldn’t have otherwise encountered if they’d stayed on board. If we could identify a specific strain of virus, we could whip up a nanobot to attack it. In the meantime, though, I’d stick with the old-fashioned treatment—acetaminophen, chlorpheniramine maleate, phenylephrine hydrochloride, and dextromethorphan, plus lots of water. The pain reliever, the antihistamine, the decongestant, and the cough suppressant would do everything a round of nanobots would, and—heresy!—might even do it better.
At a few past 1700 hours I checked out of sick bay and reported to Chief Garner, who was in charge of handing out my extra-duty hours each evening. He just grinned at me and said, “You have your duty assignment, Carlyle. Go bone up on Abyss Deep.”
So after a quick sonoshower back in my quarters, I prepared to climb into my rack-tube to take the sim. Just as I slipped inside, though, a call came through from Doob, suggesting that we rack out together in the ship’s lounge. I told him I’d meet him there.
“E-Car!” he called as I entered the lounge. “Let’s get this fucking sim out of the way, okay? I have a hot date tonight and I’m damned if I’m going to miss it.”
“Who is it, Doob? Carla again?” HM3 Carla Harper was a lab assistant whom Dubois had bedded … a lot. There was a pool running among some of the platoon Corpsmen as to whether or not he would pop the question, and when.
“Nah. Someone new.”
“Someone new? My God, it’s the end of life as we know it!”
“Knock it off.”
“Who is it?”
“None of your damned business!” He scowled at me. “What I wanna know is how come you get in trouble, but I get to share in the punishment!”
“Welcome to the Navy,” I told him. “At least you didn’t get two weeks’ restriction.”
“What restriction? We boost for Abyssworld day after tomorrow, we’ll be gone a couple of months at least, and all you miss is a couple of liberties!”
That stopped me. I hadn’t thought about that. Restriction means you stay in your quarters except when you’re going about your normal day-to-day duties, or eating in the mess hall, or doing whatever your CO tells you to do … so Doob was right. Maybe I had gotten off light.
“Okay, Doobie,” I told him. “You wanna tag the ’interactive together? It’ll go faster that way, and you can be off to your mystery date.”
“My thought exactly, E-Car.”
I thoughtclicked an internal control. “Compartment, two chairs, downloungers with full link capability. Here and here.”
The active nanomatrix in the deck obediently shaped two areas into egg-shaped chairs, both almost completely enclosed except for the oval front openings, and with deeply padded interiors that let you stretch out and back in fair comfort. I backed into one, brought my palm contacts down on the link board, and ordered a library download of the required docuinteractive.
Dubois dropped into the second seat. “I hate these things.”
“I kind of like ’em,” I replied. “Just like being there, but you don’t get eaten by the bug-eyed monster.”
“That’s the problem. You get used to ignoring dangers in a sim, they could bite you for real when you’re actually there.”
“So? Don’t be complacent. The idea is that we can step into another world and learn about it experientially. No surprises when you step into the world for real.”
“So, what did the chief call it? ‘That goddamn bleak ball of ice?’ No fun at all, man!”
“I didn’t realize we were going out there to have fun!” I nestled back into the yielding foam of the seat and put my palm on the contact pad.
There was a burst of in-head static, and then I was standing on the surface of Abyssworld.
My God, I thought. “Goddamn bleak” doesn’t even begin to cover it… .
Chapter Six
A bit of background came down the link first.
The formal name of the place is GJ 1214 I, but most people call it either Abyssworld or Abyss Deep. The data we were simming had been sent back to Earth just five years ago, but in fact the world has been known since the early twenty-first century. It was discovered by the MEarth Project,
