“Are you scared about going into the fugue, Bel?” Cassie said from very close.
He shook his head and sealed his fugue suit. “I can’t hurt myself anymore, although I don’t know if that even matters to me.”
“Don’t say that, Bel!”
“Now that the intellect is running in me all the time, I won’t be as good as you, and I might interfere with what you can see in the fugue.”
“If you do, I’ll tell you to get out,” she said finally, tugging at a strap on his suit and sealing it. He checked her suit.
Cassie was warmer, more alive, caught up in an endearing, infectious excitement.
“We’re going to look at the universe for the first time through a new kind of telescope, Bel!” She grinned.
He kissed her and they sealed their helmets. They cycled through the outer airlock and emerged on the outside of The Calculated Risk. Intermittent magnetic fields pressed at them, deeply textured, a language of hyperspace they could not speak. They clipped themselves to the rings around the airlock and moved away from The Calculated Risk, which interfered with their quantum senses.
Belisarius expanded his weird quantum fugue. To prevent his subjective consciousness from collapsing probability everywhere he looked, most of his magnetic sensation narrowed, rerouted to the quantum intellect. Less than a percent of all sensation reached him, but even this fraction was still a vast canvas.
And as he felt even this tiny fragment of the world, it collapsed in layers. But he wasn’t looking at a fragile form of life on a single dark planetoid; he stared at the cosmos. He was the fragile thing here, on a sea so vast that even the largest, widest perceptions of his quantum intellect were but glimpses of dust motes in the cathedral.
Beside him, the laughing and curious Cassie vanished. The subjective self, the consciousness that had been Cassandra had extinguished, giving her quantum intellect space to take control of her sensation and perception. He was alone out here, although he took a strangely powerful confidence that she would exist again. The fugue was a temporary pause to her subjectivity.
Maybe Cassie’s way of looking at the Hortus quantus did contain some hope. Perhaps they were only gone until he could bring them back. The Hortus quantus had existed naturally in a quantum consciousness. The extinguishing of that state might be analogous to what Cassie was now: gone, but soon to return.He didn’t want to write meaning into the world, but his brain obsessed in its searches for patterns and parallels.
He closed his eyes and let himself feel with just his magnetosomes. He stretched his arms wide, making his muscles and their embedded magnetosomes into a larger telescopic array into the quantum world. His world expanded. Only flashes of collapsing probability waves struck the subjective, conscious part of him, but even at that, the world became larger and larger as more distant quantum effects raced into his senses at the speed of light. He perceived in strobing imprecision the outside of the time gates, out to eight light-seconds. Each second he saw a light-second farther. But that was not why he and Cassie had set up this observation from within the time gates. From here, they could see the entanglement of the Axis Mundi.
The quantum intellect inside Cassandra looked at the entanglement of the time gates to each other and to all the other wormholes of the Axis Mundi. The quantum objectivity running in Belisarius’ brain found the vanishing threads of entanglement within the morass of quantum phenomena. The one-in-a-thousand snapshots, collapsing as quickly as he saw them, built a picture.
Cassie had not been able to communicate the scale of the network of entanglement earlier. There hadn’t been enough time or study. When he’d first been on the Jonglei those months ago and first tried to navigate a ship across space by following lines of entanglement, his quantum intellect had almost instantly perceived the whole of the pathway in space-time, without waiting for distant signals to reach him; no waiting light-second by slow light-second. That was why he’d seen nothing like this.
Quintillions of bits of positional and quantum information flooded into his brain, only the thousandth fraction of what the two quantum intellects perceived. A subsurface gravitational and space-time web covering a wide swath of the cosmos was illuminated in his mind in strobing flashes speckling in a pattern very much like the distribution of galaxies. And it was bright, bound by not a few dozen entangled particles or waves, but by threads of entanglement beyond counting.
What could have bound the wormholes so tightly? They might have been created all in one spot, of one origin, but entanglement decayed over time, and the degree of entanglement he saw was more than he would ever have predicted for a set of objects created together. The Axis Mundi network of wormholes became more entangled with time, not less.
And it was vast, so large that he could perceive no edges or end to it. His brain recognized the distribution patterns: the walls, the filaments and the sheets of the galaxies, all the way up to the largest structure in the known universe, the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall.
But parts of the vast web didn’t follow super-galactic structures.
As he focused on these anomalies in the starless voids between the strings of galaxies, he found more and more. They were smaller and less resonant with the rest of the web, bound to the main web of the Axis Mundi by fewer lines of entanglement, making them harder to see. Why would these be darker? Was the Axis Mundi powered and recharged by stars and galactic activity? The more he looked with his limited, strobing vision, the more he noticed that this dark web was entirely contained in the voids between the filaments, walls and superclusters of galaxies. None were part of the visible structure of the universe. The patterns of entanglement showed these other wormholes in the inter-galactic voids knit together into their own web.
For a moment, his conscious self couldn’t absorb his brain’s own theorizing.
There was an entire second Axis Mundi network, separate from the one they knew.
The realization, the epiphany, the sudden access to the truth of the cosmos, was like touching infinity. His engineered brain, over-curious, thirsting for understanding with a passion that bordered on vice, was for once slaked. His brain was full. It had reached beyond what even the engineers of the Homo quantus project had asked for. A religious ecstasy filled him and he let himself feel it. It was a Homo quantus miracle.
And in a world where miracles could exist, he might really find a new home for his people. In a world of miracles, he could find a new garden for them to make beautiful with light and to hallow with quiet contemplation. And within that garden, they could plant new seeds and hope for new miracles, like the resurrection of the Hortus quantus.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
THE PAIR OF Homo quantus were breathless and overwhelmed. They weren’t collapsing with fever the way Ayen had seen them on the Jonglei and the Limpopo, but Saint Matthew had brought both in when their temperatures had reached forty and a half degrees and their fugue suits had run out of antipyretics.
Ayen couldn’t assess the military threat the Homo quantus posed to the Union and civilization at large. They seemed to be pacifists, if inclined to thieving. Their fragility and tendency to fever limited them. But she recognized their usefulness as tools. Fragile tools to be sure, but their accomplishments were stunning.
These fragile geniuses had stolen the time gates from the tightest of Union security, discovered how to use them to travel back in time, and then figured out how to find the wormholes of the Axis Mundi. They were not tactical resources. The Homo quantus were strategic assets to entirely change the field, if only she knew what they really wanted and needed.
Arjona’s hands trembled. Mejía was more feverish, and wouldn’t make eye contact with either Ayen or Arjona. Was this savant again? The Homo quantus were incomprehensible.
Mejía took a data pad and input a series of numbers. Her movements were frenetic for the dozens of seconds she was typing, until finally she thrust it at Ayen almost aggressively. Ayen took it. The display showed a simple array, twenty
rows of coordinates, in familiar solar relative units with galactic relative units in brackets. Twenty rows.
“What is this, Mejía?” Ayen asked.
“Axes Mundi,” she said distantly.
“Twenty?”
“Twenty,” Mejía said. “Bel still feels bad about taking your time gates. We agreed to give you twenty wormholes.”
Ayen regarded the array again. What startled her more? That Arjona was sorry? Or that the Sub-Saharan Union, if it survived, would be vaulted into the first rank of the powers of civilization? Or, more disturbingly, that the locations of the wormholes were of so little value to the Homo quantus that they casually doubled her share because Arjona felt bad?
“Can I talk to you?” Ayen said. “Are you in savant?”
Both Homo quantus shied away from her words, as if uncomfortable with her even asking about their mind state. After a few seconds, Arjona gave a deep sigh that shook and transformed into a fevered breath. Mejía looked up at her next. Ayen strapped herself beside them.
“I told Arjona that we’re quits, Mejía,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m doing to humanity and civilization, but the time gates are probably safer with the Homo quantus than with the Union. We can’t use them and not all of us are to be trusted.”
“Why the change of heart?” Arjona asked.
“I’ll gladly take all twenty wormholes. They may serve to help us make some alliances. I don’t know where you’ll both go or what you’ll do, but it may be that someday you need an ally with a navy. If the Union survives, I would like us to be that ally.”
Arjona wiped at the drying sweat on his forehead.
“We’re taking the Homo quantus far away,” he said. “We may not ever see civilization again. We just want some place as quiet at the Garret.”
Ayen shook her head. “You’re no contemplative, Arjona.”
“I have a lot to think about.”
“My offer stands,” Ayen said, “hopefully longer than three months. But in the meantime, take me home. Stills and I have a war to win.”
“Fuck yeah!” Stills’ electronic voice said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
STILLS DID NOT pilot Ayen back to the Freyja Axis. Ayen let him go with Belisarius for whatever piloting the Homo quantus needed to hide his people. And she needed to show Stills more trust. Another mongrel pilot came for her.
Ayen was drained, colorless, both certain and uncertain of what she’d said to Arjona and Mejía. In just forty short years of possession of the time gates, the Union had become the most technologically advanced power in human civilization. What might the Homo quantus become given four decades?
Perhaps gods.
And gods lived best on high and distant pedestals.
Ayen’s problems were both closer to home and more immediate.
What was she going to do? Beneath her vacuum suit she had the data wafer. She’d encrypted it, and was certain that only she could open the encryption. On her waist outside her suit was the pistol she’d used to shoot Rudo in the head.
Ayen’s pilot signaled the fortifications at the Freyja Axis and they were cleared for passage through to the Bachwezi side. The pilot darted them through the eerie quiet of a proper wormhole with a proper throat of just four dimensions. On the other side, the flier angled into the shadow of the long cylinder of theMutapa, ducking out of Bachwezi’s hot light. This battleship had been her home for most of her life, yet it didn’t feel like a homecoming. A funereal pall hung over her mood.
Deck crew and officers saluted her. They had to, of course, but more than that, she’d earned their respect. The fleet did not turn just to Rudo. Among the youngest of the colonels in the navy, Ayen possessed the rank and training to command any of the Union’s warships. And yet she was prima inter pares among the colonels. She was the younger spouse of the Commander of the Navy. If the Union survived, everyone would remember that she’d been instrumental in the legendary crossing of the Puppet Axis. She’d been embedded in Arjona’s crew. And yet ironically and bitterly, no one would ever know that her greatest contribution to the rebellion was matricide. Her future held death or bitter honors.
Outside of Rudo’s quarters, Ayen found not only a trio of MPs, but the fleet’s MP commander, a resolute young lieutenant-colonel. He saluted her crisply. “The Lieutenant-General is expecting you, ma’am,” she said, “but I’ll need your sidearm please.”
Ayen wasn’t surprised. Thirty-nine years ago, three days ago, Ayen had promised to finish their gunpoint conversation. Times to pull out tools and times to put them away. Perhaps it was time for Ayen to be put away. One did not lean on an untrusted tool. Ayen unbuckled her holster and handed her weapon to the MP commander. With a trace of embarrassment, the lieutenant-colonel signaled for her to wait while he did a body scan. The MP commander saluted and the door to Rudo’s quarters slid open.
Ayen drifted in and waited for the door to close behind her before she met Rudo’s eyes. The Commander of the Navy sat strapped to a chair at a small meeting table. Her short gray hair curled tight. The plasma burn along the left side of her head was as Ayen had always known it. Familiar wrinkles surrounded Rudo’s sad brown eyes, but Ayen saw another Captain Rudo laid over this one. Past and present co-existed.
“Nice touch with the MP, commander,” Ayen said, omitting the respectful ma’am she’d previously used even in the privacy of their joint spousal quarters. Ayen pushed off the wall to a chair at the table opposite Rudo.
“I wanted to stop you from doing something that would hurt your career,” Rudo said.
Ayen maneuvered into the chair and strapped herself in. Her mood was still dark, and she didn’t try to hide it.
“If you want to kill me,” Rudo said, “don’t do it in a moment of unplanned anger. There’s no point in the Union losing both of us. You’re skilled enough to assassinate me in a way that won’t implicate you.”
This wasn’t the answer Ayen had been expecting.
“That’s the way they took care of Colonel Munyaradzi, isn’t it?” Ayen asked.
Rudo’s eyes widened, then looked ashamed.
“I haven’t heard that name in a long time,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t know you found about him.”
“But he made you, didn’t he? Did he help you kill the real Rudo, or did he only take advantage of the fact that you had something to hide?”
Bitter heat radiated from her words.
“I killed her,” Rudo said simply. “My handlers promised me a fast track through the ranks. I owed nothing to the Union. The political class didn’t want people like me for anything. And then, as now, Union politicians were incapable of unifying behind a single purpose or policy the way the Congregate could. It was the right deal. I would have had a good career if the Expeditionary Force hadn’t found the time gates.”
“The Congregate must have known of you then,” Ayen said. “They must know you now.”
“No doubt.”
“Are you theirs?”
“I haven’t been theirs since you shot me.”
The air thickened between them. It was all just words. What proof did Ayen have? She’d started her career as an auditor. She knew what evidence was. But there was no evidence for loyalty.
“And Okonkwo?” Ayen said.
Rudo shifted uncomfortably. Then shook her head.
“I disappointed her. And Zivai,” Rudo said. “She told me that she’d met you. She despised not being able to seek justice for what I’d been planning. She dissolved my marriage to them. Okonkwo was promoted and took over Bioweapons Research.”
Replacing your mother remained unsaid.
“You lost,” Ayen said.
Rudo pursed her lips.
“Major-General Takatafare knew I’d been involved in the assassination. More than that. I told her that I’d been visited from the future, that I’d sent someone from the future to kill Brigadier Iekanjika. I had evidence. Nothing else could explain it. Takatafare’s hands were tied too by th
at knowledge. She promoted me to a major on her staff.”
There was a look of deep pain on Rudo’s face, something Ayen had never seen. Was that it? The fate of the Union depended on whether Ayen believed that Rudo was being honest? It was astonishing. Their whole future could not depend on belief.
Ayen’s anger at Rudo deflated. She hadn’t the energy to sustain such an assault. Only so much of her world could crumble at once. Rudo had lied and conspired to murder and she’d been promoted. Ayen could not have justice any more than Colonel Okonkwo or Major-General Takatafare.
And what justice could be just? Rudo was a product of the political gangsterism of the Union and heavy-handed political interference of the Congregate hegemony. But on the other side of the scales, she was the architect of their emergence from those times. And architects could only use the tools they knew. Impersonation. Murder. Intimidation. Extortion. Lying. These had been Rudo’s tools.
Until, somewhere between becoming a captain thirty-nine years ago and becoming a lieutenant-general a few weeks ago, a tool had fallen into Rudo’s hands, a tool called Ayen Iekanjika. Rudo had created circumstances where the tool would be best positioned to hold up the sprawling edifice of her rise.
Had Ayen ever been a prodigy, a trusted officer, a valued younger spouse? Or was she just a critical cog in a device? Ayen was used to battle plans, with soldiers and officers and warships assuming specific roles at specific times, sometimes dying, often killing. But time and history gripped Ayen more powerfully than any battle plan.
Failure to play her part could cost lives or even the entire battle. Failure to play her part might have ripped time. She hadn’t believed in destiny or fate before, but how could the first thirty-nine years of her life be anything but pre-destined? It had been Ayen’s destiny to murder her mother to clear the way for Major Rudo. Colonel Rudo. Major-General Rudo. Lieutenant-General Rudo. She hadn’t been strong enough to try fate and time itself. She’d done what she’d had to do.
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