Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

Wavefronts
of History
and
Memory
There is a coldness at my heart, colder
even than the airless space around me:
a ball of laser-cooled cesium gas mere
billionths of a degree above absolute.
Surrounded by layers and shells of vacuum
and ceramic though it may be, still I feel the
tendrils of cold creeping like threads of ice
through my chest. I shudder at the necessity.
But the promise . . .
In one facet of my mind, a jewel-toned
transparent sphere clicks open to reveal a profusion
of layers: Paleoelectromagnetic Era,
Broadcast Age, Late Encrypted Period. The
vertical scale absurdly exaggerated, of course.
The surface of the sphere divided into sectors
whose names predate even the Eoradio Age:
Centaurus, Pisces, Canopus. And here, in
Aries sector at the lower edge of the Second
Global War period, where the earliest dawning
fragments of the later technophilian empires
can just barely be detected, a pulsing
point of blue-white light. Me.
I have emerged from Keene space into Ein-
David D. Levine
stein space exactly where I meant to be.
Where I want to be?
Perhaps not. But here I am.
I have not revisited this sector in eight
years, despite its rich promise, because of
memories of Aleá . . . the hope of what I might
find here outweighed by the dread of what I
know I will recall. But when the Institute extended
this cold bright promise to me, a signal
honor indeed, I knew immediately where
I must put it to use.
Oh, sweet Aleá, my lost love, the source of
so much pain . . . will the treasure be worth
the hazard?
I extend my antennae, fingers and toes
stretching outward—atom-thin wires shooting
from my ship-body—tiny impellers drawing
my substance out into a cobweb a
quarter-year wide. I turn the great ear toward
the rubble of Earth. I listen. I feel for the shredded,
attenuated signal.
And yes. Yes, oh yes, oh there it is.
Crisper than I’d ever before felt; clearer
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