Tao frowned. That was an evasive answer. He hadn’t really answered her question. She elected to let it go for now.
‘Okay. Well, I’m here to ask you to take the folded-space barrier down. I assume it was erected to protect you in case one of the asteroids got through, and I’m pleased to be able to report that they’ve all been successfully destroyed. I understand your need for a shield of some kind to maintain your secrecy, but the folded-space barrier is unnecessary and precludes the young agents from accessing your training.’
The Speaker did a strange manoeuvre consisting of a half-turn of the torso and a forty-five-degree inclination of the head that Tao hadn’t seen before. He seemed to be listening, and after about ten seconds, turned back.
‘Unfortunately, that will not be possible. The consensus among my colleagues is that the barrier should be maintained for now. However, we would be pleased to accommodate the young agents. If you would assist them through, they can remain with us until they complete their training. Then, of course, they will be able to make their own way out.’
‘I suppose that’d be okay.’ Tao was a little doubtful, though she couldn’t decide why. This was the first time in her life she’d ever felt like this with the Eich. There was something about this new Speaker – something which made her profoundly uncomfortable. In a human, she’d have used the word “shifty”, but it was difficult to ascribe that term to a three-metre-tall alien with a face that was stuck in a perpetual leer.
‘Excellent! Please arrange for the young agents to come to us as soon as possible.’ The Speaker seemed to have picked up on her anxiety and seemed keen to terminate this encounter. He turned to leave.
‘I also wanted to ask you about The Way and the sub-quantal entities,’ Tao shouted after him. ‘What’s your take on them?’
The Speaker performed the strange, half-swivel to look back, while still maintaining forward motion away from her. ‘I’m sorry, but I have no knowledge of these things.’ He stopped and began to turn back. ‘Would you like to explain further?’
‘No, it’s all right. I’ll get back to you on it.’
‘Very well. Farewell for now.’
The speaker turned away again, leaving Tao perplexed. She’d felt sure the Eich would know something, but the response from the Speaker suggested otherwise. And what was this obsession with maintaining the folded-space barrier? The general lack of interest exhibited by the new Speaker was unprecedented, as was his apparent need to consult with others before making any decisions. Something was clearly going on, and anything that destabilised the Eich couldn’t be good for humanity.
The only positive part of this whole communication had been the agreement to reinstate the young agents’ training, so Tao determined she should expedite that as quickly as possible before anything else unexpected happened. First up, though, was a quick chat with Deira followed by a visit with Josh in sub-quantal space.
Without thinking, she completely ignored the sequential time and space folds she’d used to get into this habitat, and slipped into a combination of the two, a time-space-fold. She stepped directly through into Chayka’s lab in Cambridge and went looking for Deira. It didn’t take her long because there were only a limited number of places she might be, and she soon tracked her down to Professor Chayka’s office, where she and Juliette were waiting for Chayka to finish a call. Tao picked up a chair from one of the nearby work stations and invited herself in, placing her chair next to Juliette, and sitting down. Deira and Juliette looked at her in surprise.
‘Seen the Eich already?’ Deira whispered. ‘Didn’t take long.’
‘Tell you about it later. What’s going on here?’
‘The professor’s talking to Professor Ganesh in Glasgow,’ Juliette said. ‘He’s the one who developed the human cloning technique we’re hoping to use for Adam and Josh,’
‘He’s been talking for quite a while,’ Deira said, looking as if she was sorry for the person on the other end. ‘From what we can make out, there’s a sticking point around the length of time it’ll take to grow a new body.’
‘Well if six months is the only option available, we’ll take it,’ Tao said. ‘Not perfect, but something.’
She shut up as Chayka terminated the call and stared at her, examining her as if she were an insect pinned to a board.
‘Tau Chen, I believe,’ he said. ‘Your re-appearance is nothing short of remarkable. How did you escape the energy-sink of sub-quantal space?’
‘It’s kind of difficult to explain,’ Tao replied. ‘I could show you if you had mentalic abilities, but ...’ She tried to think of a suitable simile. ‘… I think it works a little like your QUAVERs.’
Chayka looked unconvinced. ‘The QUAVERs extract energy from the quantum vacuum. That would be unavailable to you in sub-quantal space.’
‘That’s not strictly true. It’s accessible through the hole in the infra-low. I’m not sure of the specifics, but I know it’s not possible if you don’t have such a hole.’
Now Chayka looked more interested. ‘Possible,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to examine the mathematics. It would explain why neither Adam nor Josh MacMahon can escape. They have no bodies, and hence no infra-low. It would also explain why normal humans can’t access or return from sub-quantal space. They have no hole in their infra-low either. This appears to be a mutation confined to a very small number of people – those you refer to as mentalic-capable. Yes, it starts to make sense.’
Deira listened silently to this exchange. She could understand why Chayka was enthused by what Tao said but she was currently more interested in the call Chayka had just finished. Time to bring him back to more practical issues.
‘So, what did Professor Ganesh say?’ she asked.
‘Ah, yes. The cloning.’ Chayka briefly went into “absent mode”, though it seemed far from brief to an already expectant Deira. Thankfully, he snapped back relatively quickly, and after a short period of goatee-stroking, apparently thought it appropriate to continue. ‘I’m afraid Professor Ganesh is adamant. The process can’t be hurried. A viable cloned embryo can be produced very quickly, but the subsequent development of that embryo is constrained by the combination of growth factors and hormones that must be used. Six months is already very tight, and he can’t see any way of speeding things up without risking the final product.’
So, that was it, then. Josh would have to wait months for his new body. Deira’s hopes of seeing him soon had been thoroughly trashed. Luckily, she was becoming used to such downturns. The important thing to cling on to was that she definitely would get him back at some point. Unfortunately, she was back to the infernal waiting game once again.
‘Professor,’ she said. ‘I won’t even pretend I’m not disappointed, but there’s something else we need to discuss. You’ll recall the discussion we had, before Tao arrived, about the entities trapped in sub-quantal space?’
Chayka nodded. ‘Indeed. There’s a considerable amount of work to do relating to their effect on the cosmic constants but, as I remember it, we agreed to look for a way to free them. You thought Agent Chen and the young agents might be able to come up with a mentalic solution.’
‘Yeah, well, about that. Do you think there’s any way of developing a physical process to achieve the same thing?’
‘A physical process?’ Chayka zoned-out completely and Deira looked across at Juliette with frustration.
‘How do you cope with this,’ she asked.
Juliette laughed. ‘It’s not usually a problem, Mum. He’s never done this since I’ve been working with him. Seems to be an effect you have on him.’
Deira grunted and settled back to wait. She turned to Tao.
‘So, how was your visit to the Eich, Tao?
‘They’re not very interested,’ Tao said.
‘What? But …’
‘They’ve agreed to complete the young agents’ training if I take them through the barrier, but that’s about all. They won’t take the barrier down and they d
on’t admit to knowing anything about The Way.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I know. I wanted to have a chat to you and Josh about it. They’ve got a new Speaker, by the way.’
‘What happened to the old one?’
‘Died. The new Speaker didn’t want to discuss it.’
‘Crap! Everything’s going to hell in a hand-basket. Could you take me to see the new Speaker? I’d like to see what he’s like for myself.’
‘Sure. No problem. I …’
At that moment Chayka emerged from what Deira was increasingly thinking of as his own personal version of brainwave-surfing. It was quite sudden, and he continued from where he’d left off relatively seamlessly, apparently unaware of the intervening conversation.
‘A physical process,’ he repeated. ‘We would need a significant power source, like a CFR or a QUAVER, to keep the transit corridor open. However, I remain unclear about how to access sub-quantal space in the first place. And there is still the problem of providing bodies for all these entities.’
Tao shook her head. ‘Bodies aren’t a problem. They’re usually energy beings. As to access, would it help if you were to monitor me while I made a quick visit to sub-quantal space? I was planning to see Josh in any case.’
‘I have no idea whether it would help or not,’ Chayka said. ‘However, there is clearly nothing to be lost by trying. When were you planning on going?’
Tao smiled. ‘How about now?’
§
It took a little time getting Tao hooked up to the battery of monitors that Chayka wanted to use. In addition to the standard EEG, there were all sorts of other pieces of apparatus involved, and Juliette rapidly found she needed some help. She called Gary, who was delighted to be involved, but suggested carrying out the whole experiment with Tao in a quantal scanner. That meant taking everything off again, moving Tao to the scanner, and re-attaching, and it was late afternoon before they were ready to go.
Tao lay on the scanner gurney looking and feeling like something from a sci-fi tri-vid. It wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d volunteered for this, but she didn’t have much choice now. She tried to make herself comfortable and keep the scowl she could feel forming, off her face. She tried smiling instead.
‘Are you alright, Tao?’ Juliette said. ‘You look sort of sick.’
‘I’m fine.’ She did away with the smile and relaxed. They’d have to put up with whatever look she was giving them. ‘Are we ready to go yet?’
‘Just one more connection,’ Gary said. ‘There! All done.’ He looked for Chayka’s approval. ‘Are you happy for us to commence, sir?’
‘Please proceed.’
Chayka sat down to watch his monitors and Gary made one last check to ensure everything was recording properly. He started the scanner and waited for the few minutes it took to produce a baseline image.
‘Okay, Tao. Whenever you like.’
‘About time.’
Tao immersed.
Chapter 21
Josh watched Tao leave with a combination of pride, that she was able to do it at all, and a considerable amount of envy. He knew he should be grateful to be alive, but it would sure be nice to get back into normal space in a real body once more. Okay, things had improved considerably since he and Tao had learned to form a “hard photon” body. At least that made interaction possible – real physical interaction. It still wasn’t the same, though, and the thought that the universe was under threat and he couldn’t do anything to help was becoming intolerably frustrating.
Barth and Nerima had accompanied them into the “shallows” as he thought of them – the edges of sub-quantal space, where it was closest to normal space – and they’d watched as Tao had somehow leapt out of sub-quantal space and back into her infra-low. However, the mere presence of such shallows opened-up a whole load of questions about the topology of sub-quantal space. If it had shallows and edges, almost like a massive sea, that implied it was finite in extent. Yet he now knew that the entire infinite multiverse was contained within it. How did you contain something that was infinite in something that was self-evidently finite?
He turned to Barth and put the question to him. The alien shook his head.
‘I don’t know. The problem of infinities has always bedevilled mathematics. There are many different infinities, and many mechanisms for apparently resolving the impossible. In this case, I’m as ignorant as you. Despite being trapped in sub-quantal space almost from the beginning of this universe, we’re still a long way from learning all its secrets. In some respects, it’s the very fact we are trapped in it that precludes us from learning about it. It would be more instructive to examine it from the outside.’
‘But you had aeons to figure it out in your original universe.’
‘Well I think we had a good excuse not to. There was no such thing as sub-quantal space in our original universe.’
‘You’re joking! I assumed it would be integral to all universes.’
‘Not at all – or, at least, not that we can tell from our experience of two. It might be that most universes don’t have it and this one is the exception rather than the rule. Who can say? What I can tell you is that we’ve been struggling to understand this sub-quantal space ever since we arrived. Though we’ve learned a lot, it’s not nearly enough.’
‘I’m staggered,’ Josh said. ‘I assumed that beings who’d lived as long as you would know pretty much everything there is to be known.’
Barth smiled sadly. ‘Another example of an infinity, I regret to say. There’s an infinite amount of information out there, and a finite length of time to assimilate it. Not to mention a finite capacity to understand, of course.’ He looked wistful for a moment. ‘At one time, we thought of ourselves as gods. We’ve learned better. We know now we could never aspire to be gods – not gods in the usual sense of the word, anyway. The universe is simply too vast.’
Josh thought back to the mentalic download Barth had provided. He’d felt the emotions Barth had felt, understood the reasons he’d done what he’d done, and recognised the sense of injustice his whole race had felt when they realised they’d outlived their universe. He knew he should be careful not to ascribe complete veracity to the story, because it must have been highly filtered for him to have been able to assimilate it at all. Despite that, he still wondered at the tenacity of this race, and their sheer bad luck. They’d believed they had won through, created a new universe when their old one died, only to find themselves trapped in this pseudo-reality. And worse, their mere presence here put the outside universe – the universe they had created – in great peril. It was a tragedy of the highest order.
He saw Barth watching him. It was strange the way he and Nerima appeared to be fascinated by him – and Tao too, when she was here. He’d initially supposed it was simply to do with finally finding someone who could help free them, but now he felt there was something else.
‘You mustn’t feel sorry for us,’ Barth said, ‘We had our time. Any other species would have been grateful for that and accepted their fate. We were different. We railed against it. We were so determined not to die the true death that we interfered with creation itself. Greater hubris there cannot be, and we’ve suffered because of it.’ He looked down. ‘What’s intolerable is that we’ve put everything at risk – our entire creation. That must be resolved.’
Josh nodded. ‘We’ll get you out somehow. Once the other young agents are fully trained, they’ll be available to help. There’ll be eight others, as well as Tao. It’ll make a big difference.’
‘It will if it happens. We really need to be out of here within two to three years at the most – less if possible. Only then will the universe be safe.’
‘And what then?’ Josh said. ‘I assume you’re virtually immortal in your energy-bodies. What do you intend doing when this universe comes to an end?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you we’d never considered that?’
‘Not really.’ Josh laughed. ‘You’ve only had thirteen billion years or so to think of it.’.
‘A very good point. In fact, it has come to mind occasionally.’ Josh saw the frown on Nerima’s face. Could it be she didn’t want this discussed? Or hadn’t Barth mentioned it to her? He carried on regardless. ‘Most of my colleagues have been focused simply on escaping sub-quantal space and have not thought about the distant future. I confess, it is something I have considered.’
‘I’d have expected nothing less from the person who instigated all this in the first place. So, what are your thoughts?’
‘I think we should try again.’ Barth looked guiltily at Nerima, who turned away shaking her head. ‘As you can see, Nerima doesn’t currently share my view.’
‘And neither does anyone else!’ Nerima turned, and walked to within inches of him, staring into his eyes with an intensity Josh hadn’t seen before. ‘We’ve had enough of this. We’ll enjoy what time we have in this universe – assuming it can be saved – and then we’ll accept our fate gladly.’
Barth gazed calmly back, as if this sort of confrontation wasn’t that unusual.
‘You say that now. Will you still say the same when the time arrives? Somehow, I think not, and by then it will be too late. No, if nothing else, we must be prepared.’
Nerima shook her head in obvious frustration and wondered away a short distance. Barth’s shoulders slumped, and Josh was suddenly aware of the depth of responsibility this entity felt for the survival of his species, and the loneliness that accompanied it. He’d accomplished all that he had, carried the opprobrium of a high percentage of the very individuals he’d saved, yet still he was planning to save them again. His personality must be formidable indeed to have borne up under such stress, and it couldn’t help that even his partner disagreed with him on this central belief that the species must survive come what may.
Josh knew that his surprise at their recent disagreement was plastered all over his non-poker face, which seemed to be as big a problem in photonic form as when it was made of flesh and blood. He couldn’t help himself. Somehow, the thought of millennia-old entities having a marriage spat just didn’t seem right.
Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Page 16