Convergence
Convergence
u Introduction: The
Expanding Heritage Universe When Einstein in 1915 published the
field equations of general relativity in their final form, he applied them to the study of
the whole universe. Soon he discovered something surprising and disconcerting: any
universe with matter in it will not stand still. According to his equations, it must
either expand or contract.
To get around that problem, Einstein
introduced a term into his equations that he called the "cosmological constant."
A decade later, it was found that the universe does not stand still. Distant galaxies are
receding. The universe is expanding. Einstein at that point described his use of the
cosmological constant as the worse blunder of his life. He had been in a position to
predict the expansion of the universe, long before it was measured, and he had blown the
chance. The cosmological constant, brought in to stop the universe expanding, became a
monster that was hard to kill-it survives in theories to this day.
Einstein's reputation is in no danger. He
will be famous as long as humans are doing physics. However, any writer who has ever built
a universe runs into a similar problem: the universe of the imagination wants to expand,
and it does so in several different directions. It is as much as an author can do to keep
track of it, never mind control it.
The Heritage Universe began with one
simple observation: there is nothing in physics that says an object cannot disappear from
spacetime at one point, and instantly appear in another. In fact, quantum theory rather
encourages that point of view. Sub-atomic particles constantly vanish and show up
somewhere else, without anyone being able to explain how the transition took place.
Relativity theory forbids the acceleration of an object up to or past the speed of light;
nor can we send signals through ordinary space at speeds faster than light. But instant
disappearance and reappearance elsewhere is not prohibited.
So let us suppose that the structure of
spacetime is more complicated than it seems on the surface. Suppose certain places can be
reached from certain other points without the usual process of traveling. You might call
these special locations wormholes, or spacetime singularities. I call them nodes of the
Bose Network.
This idea has one obvious consequence:
interstellar travel becomes a lot easier. The universe, or at least the easily accessible
universe, expands enormously.
There are two other consequences, not
quite so obvious. First, if only certain places can be nodes of the Bose Network
transforms, the usual science fiction ideas about interstellar travel must change.
To see why, suppose we have three stars
that sit at the vertices of a triangle, each one five hundred lightyears from the other
two. Let two of the stars lie within a few billion kilometers (which is just a few
light-hours) of a couple of nodes of the Bose Network. Let the other star be a full
lightyear away from its nearest Bose node. Then, once travel through the Bose Network has
been established, the first two stars become close neighbors. There can be frequent
commerce and regular travel between them.
The third star, however, will seem to the
others to be way off in the distance. A traveler who goes to its nearest Bose node still
faces a multi-year journey, at a fraction of light-speed, to reach the star. The
separation between points in the Galaxy is no longer given in terms of actual positions.
The distance from a node is all that matters.
So far, so good. We have a rather simple
fact, one that allows rapid interstellar travel. What is the other major implication?
Well, before the discovery of the Bose Network, humans had been moving steadily out to the
stars using hibernation and robot spacecraft. The process was necessarily slow. The
nearest stars are lightyears away, and travel speeds must be slower than the speed of
light. Trip times of hundreds of years were the norm.
But now, at a stride, comes the power to
make a transition from one Bose node to another, spanning many lightyears in no time at
all. The slow ships, crawling through space, will find other humans waiting for them when
they reach their destinations.
That would be shock enough. But it gets
worse. Humanity, racing out through the galaxy, will not find it devoid of intelligence.
Once outside "crawlspace," the few hundred lightyears of the spiral arm explored
by sub-lightspeed ships, we encounter aliens as smart as we are-and with the same high
opinion of themselves.
Those aliens have their own spheres of
influence. The Cecropia Federation lies roughly in the direction of the galactic center
(see the map), and it contains half a dozen intelligent species. The Fourth Alliance,
another independent region, is the main domain of humans. It centers on Sol, has an
overlap region with the Federation that is known as the Phemus Circle, and bulges away
into the area of Earth's night sky spanned by Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, and Epsilon Aurigae.
A handful of near-intelligent aliens can be found in the Fourth Alliance, but nothing as
formidable-or dangerous-as the Cecropians.
The Zardalu Communion lies along a
different heading, in the direction of Arcturus, though it begins far beyond that star.
The original developers of the Communion territory, the Zardalu, are now (thank Heaven)
extinct, but in their time they were the terror of the Spiral Arm. A narrow corridor of
the Zardalu Communion also approaches the Phemus Circle. The latter group of worlds is
well situated to be fought over by the major clades-if anyone were fool enough to want
such an impoverished and dismal backwater.
Scattered throughout these diverse regions
are the ancient and enigmatic structures of an ancient and vanished race, known only as
the Builders. The uses of some of the relict Artifacts can be guessed at-more or less-but
most remain totally baffling. Naturally, both humans and aliens are eager to understand
the ancient Builder constructs, and to know where the Builders themselves have gone. In an
attempt to reach that understanding, many of them converge on a single system, Dobelle, to
witness an event known as Summertide.
They meet, they interact, and at that
point they run out of control. Humans, Cecropians, Zardalu, Hymenopts, Lo'tfians,
Varnians, Ditrons, Decantil Myrmecons, Bercians, and Chism Polyphemes bubble and boil and
fume and fight all over the Spiral Arm. They explore dozens of Builder Artifacts:
Sentinel, Lens, the Torvil Anfract, Serenity, Cocoon, Umbilical, Elephant, Paradox, the
Eye of Gargantua, Flambeau, Cusp, Dendrite, Glister, Labyrinth, and a wide variety of
Phages. Driven by fear, greed, or curiosity, they show up on dozens of planets: Teufel,
Styx, Quake, Darby's Lick, Opal, Miranda, Sentinel Gate, Ker, Bridle Gap, Polytope,
Rumbleside, Genizee, Scaldworld, Jerome's World, Terminus, Pelican's Wake, Merryman's Woe,
Shasta and Grisel and Peppermill.
What began as a single book, Summertide,
expands to a second, Divergence; then it extends into a third, Transcendence. And finally
there is a fourth, Convergence.
Note that I said finally. With that fourth
book, the tetralogy is over. The Heritage Universe has-at last-stopped its expansion.
I think.
I assume.
I hope.
Would someone kindly pass me the
cosmological constant?