Eternity

by Greg Bear

  “Fewer voices in the chorus,” he said. “But I’m seeing what I’ll be more clearly. I think Olmy will approve, don’t you?’

  “Has he been to see you?”

  Tapi nodded. “Some time back. He gave his approval.”

  She withheld some half-sarcastic comment. “He knows quality when he sees it,” she said instead.

  “Father’s facing some very large problems.”

  “Aren’t we all.”

  “Perhaps larger than you think.”

  She examined her son’s present image—very close to the appearance of his chosen body-form—and asked, “Has he told you anything…surprising?”

  “No,” Tapi said. But he was holding something back. He knew the present status of his parents’ relationship; he would not carry tales.

  “I’m concerned about him.”

  “So am I.”

  “Should I be more concerned?”

  “I don’t know,” Tapi said, honestly. “He tells me very little.”

  Ram Kikura set her mind on the task at hand, finished examining the deleted adjuncts, and embraced her son. “All right,” she said. “I think you’re ready.”

  “Your approval?” he asked, an eagerness in his voice that belied his previous complaining.

  “Registered already,” she said. She did not go through the age-old formula, as Olmy had; she resisted that kind of traditionalism.

  “Have you decided where you’re going to be born?”

  “Yes,” he said. “On Thistledown.”

  Olmy had been born within the asteroid; she had been born on Axis City. Still, she knew Tapi was not slighting her.

  Tapi arranged his personal space to hide the discarded adjuncts. “Do you approve of my plans once I’m born?”

  “It’s not my place to approve or disapprove. You’ll be independent.”

  “Yes, but I appreciate your opinion.”

  “My opinion is,” she said, “like father, like son. Olmy’s part in you is very strong. Mine seems subdued at the moment. But I have no doubt you’ll make us both proud.”

  Tapi literally beamed, filling the space with light. He embraced her again. “You’re as much a soldier as Father,” he said. “You just fight different battles.”

  Olmy felt more in control among his fellows, and less strained by the circumstances than he had thought. Still, it was good to be alone, if only for a few hours. He missed the isolation of the fourth chamber forest.

  He did not return to the Thistledown City apartment; instead, he had accepted temporary quarters beneath the Nexus dome. Whoever so desired could spy on him all they wished; he was certain they could not discover what he carried in his implants.

  There was a strong temptation to simply lie still and study what his partial was sending to him; he resisted that temptation and went through the intricate steps of the Frants’ relsoso dance, taught to him over a century ago on Timbl, the Frant homeworld. He stretched out his arms and lifted his legs, twisting smoothly from corner to corner of the small quarters. Frant anatomy was inherently more subtle and flexible than human; Olmy had to refashion some of the basic movements. Still, the relsoso did its job. He felt more relaxed and stronger afterward.

  “Now I’ll sit and vegetate,” he announced out loud, squatting in the middle of the blank, unfashioned parlor and its white furniture-forms.

  The exchange with the Jart mentality was proceeding smoothly, according to his partial; in a few more hours, more information would be passed through the barriers.

  What he already had to digest was considerable. There was little room left in his implants to process the material more rapidly; between the Jart, his partial, the various barriers and safeguards, and the cleared and uploaded information, the implants were filled almost to capacity. His study consequently was slow, limited to a natural human rhythm. There were some advantages to this; implant processing of information was rapid but sometimes lacked the cross connections of more natural thinking.

  Olmy closed his eyes and was bathed in Jart philosophy. Translating the concepts into human language or even thought was difficult at times; other times, the ideas seemed directly analogous. He mused on the possibility that the Jart was releasing this part of itself in order to persuade its captor; propaganda certainly was not out of the question.

  He instructed his partial to match the cultural and philosophical exchange with an equal emphasis on persuasion.

  Jarts were voracious conquerors, much more so than humans. While humans desired commerce, Jarts seemed to relish domination and complete subjugation. They were unwilling to share hegemony with non-Jart species, making exceptions only when they had no choice. The Talsit, for example, had traded with Jarts before humans had retaken the first few billion kilometers of the Way. The Jarts must have known that conquering the elusive Talsit was virtually impossible. Talsit were after all representatives of a much older race, even more mysterious—and certainly far more advanced—than Jarts.

  The question was, why such voracity? What lay behind the push to control everything?

  Command has duty established by >ancient command< Gather and preserve that >descendant command< may complete the last duty. Then there is repose for expediters and all others, and in repose we will become ourselves again, relieved of duty, relaxing the >image of strained materials< that is our thought and being. Why is this not what humans do?

  Olmy tried to riddle this apparently key passage. It had such a formal air that he surmised it might contain quotes from some ethical or semi-religious work of literature or indoctrination.

  The notion of descendant command was particularly intriguing, with its overtones of Jart evolution, transformation and transcendence. Oddly, in this idea there was also the only hint that Jarts and other beings could equitably cooperate and share responsibility. There was an implication of vast enterprise behind descendant command, of work that surpassed the capabilities of any individual group of beings.

  Gather and preserve. That string/image was particularly striking. Olmy searched the background behind it, opening up layer after layer of complex instruction. The Jarts were collectors, and more than that; they transformed what they collected, hoping to prevent self-destruction of the collected objects, beings, cultures, and planets. Nature was, for them, a process of decay and loss; best to take control of all things, stop the decay and loss, and ultimately present this neatly beribboned package to…descendant command.

  Olmy felt a mixture of attraction and horror. Theirs was not a selfish greed; it was a compulsion of incredible depth and uniformity for such a diverse and advanced culture, and it had little to do with their own welfare and progress. Jarts were simply the means to a transcendent end. They believed they could rest only when the task was done, when the neat package of preserved galaxies (such maniacal ambition!) would be given up to this nebulous entity; their reward would consist of being gathered and preserved themselves. And what would descendant command do with the package?

  It wasn’t a Jart’s duty to speculate. Certainly not an expediter, however modified.

  Olmy found a list of supremely forbidden actions and inactions. While it might be necessary to destroy in the struggle to completely preserve—as the Jarts had to destroy human forces to try to keep control of the Way—to destroy unnecessarily was hideous sin. There was not a hint of cruelty in any portion of the Jart philosophies; no enjoyment of victory, no petty satisfaction for the success of a moment’s work, no savoring of an opponent’s defeat. Ideally, Jart actions were to be motivated only by desire for the transcendent goal. Satisfaction would come when the package was presented.

  Olmy doubted that this kind of purity was possible in any living being, but that at least was the ideal; and in its rigor and selflessness it put to shame a good many exalted human philosophies. There was a neatness and finality about it that denied change of mission without denying progress; progress in speeding achievement of the goal was highly desirable, and any level of Jart from expediter to comman
d could make improvements subject to command approval.

  Human history had seldom managed that neat trick; fixed goals almost inevitably fixed change, causing a strain in human history that usually led to denial or reshaping of the goals.

  Even in the Hexamon there was the dichotomy of accepted philosophy—Star, Fate and Pneuma and the rule of the Good Man Nader—and the contradiction of actions necessary to preserve institutions and advantages for individuals, groups and the Hexamon as a whole.

  Jarts could fit war and destruction neatly into their philosophy, encompassing contradiction of goals in a tight wrap of necessity while controlling excess and bloodlust. Humans had never been so neat about their paradoxes, nor so capable of reining in excess.

  Olmy realized there was an element of propaganda here, very effective propaganda. He was not seeing Jart history; there seemed very little of that. He was simply being fed the ideals with no information as to how closely they were followed.

  He withdrew from the philosophy and sped through an overview of the Way’s role in the Jart scheme.

  When the Jarts had first entered the Way through a fortuitous test gate, they had quickly understood the principles behind this marvel. They had thought themselves either the creators of this infinite tube-shaped universe, through a rationale Olmy found difficult to follow, or they had postulated that descendant command had sent it to them to help them reach their goals. And the Way could not have been more neatly designed for them; by understanding its principles, as they quickly did, Jarts could open gates to any point in the universe, and even find means to enter other universes. They could travel to the end of time. In this Jart’s memory, they had not done so, apparently, never having mounted an expedition like that of the Geshel precincts after the Sundering…. Perhaps they felt it was best to leave such things to descendant command, or at least to wait until their task was finished.

  As a tool, the Way fit into their plans perfectly. Through the Way, Jarts could wrap up and even present the package in record time.

  Olmy barely touched the image connected with this idea: a static, perfectly controlled universe, all energies harnessed, all mysteries removed, unchanging, ready for consumption by descendant command.

  It was a logical conclusion.

  Still, it made him feel justified for all the resistance he had offered to the Jarts. Theirs was the purity of a kind of death. Jarts did not savor or enjoy or suffer or exult; they merely performed their roles, like viruses or machines…

  He knew the simplification was unfair, but a feeling of deep abhorrence was upon him. Here was an enemy he could understand and hate at the same moment.

  His partial signaled that more information was ready for transfer and consideration.

  Olmy opened his eyes. It was hard to reorient after such strange journeys. Having barely skimmed the data already available, he packed it away and cleared the path for more.

  39

  The Way

  Her captor’s scrupulous attention to leading her step by step to Gaia began to wear on Rhita early in the journey. Nothing, not even the scale of what she was seeing, was familiar or comprehensible.

  First, she was taken from her chamber—actually quite a small room, nowhere near the cavern she had imagined—and placed inside a protective oval bubble, where they stood on a flat, railed platform four or five arms wide and as black as lamp soot. The escort accompanied her in the bubble, which seemed to be made of exquisitely thin glass.

  Or perhaps soap. She was not willing to place any limits on what her captors could do.

  “Where are my companions?” she asked. The image of Demetrios had been left behind; they were alone in the bubble.

  “They are taking a much quicker route. What I am doing with you is, if I may borrow a word, expensive; it consumes energy. I am given only so much energy for my tasks.”

  The bubble hung suspended in blackness. Ahead of them, at the far end of the blackness, a brilliant triangle of white light grew as large as her outstretched hand, and then stopped. For a moment there was no further action; the escort stood in silence, staring at the light ahead.

  Rhita shivered. Something animal in her looked for a way out, hoping that some magic had suspended all this reality and provided her with a chance to escape. But she did not try. Left idle with her thoughts, she turned and saw an opaque wall behind them, covered with the sheen of an oil slick on black water, gold and silver and all the colors of the rainbow besides.

  The wall stretched off above them in shadowy darkness. It was hauntingly, massively beautiful; it gave her no clues whatsoever as to where she was, or what would happen next. The silence terrified her; she had to speak to keep from screaming.

  “I don’t know your name,” she said quietly. The escort turned to her, smooth face all attention, and she was oddly ashamed for even wanting to know such things about her enemy. The shame came in part from realizing that she could not hate this figure standing beside her; she wasn’t even sure what it was. To learn more, she would have to ask questions that might make her seem weak.

  “Do you want me to have a name?” the escort asked pleasantly.

  “You don’t have a name of your own?”

  “My companions address me in a wide variety of ways. In this form, however, since I am to be viewed and accessed only by you, I have no name.”

  His seeming obtuseness renewed her irritation. “Please choose a name,” she said, turning away from him.

  “Then I will be Kimōn. Is this a suitable name?”

  She had had a third school paidagōgos named Kimōn. He had been a round, pleasant man, gentle and persistent but not quick. She had felt deep affection for Kimōn as a young girl. Perhaps the escort hoped to play on that. And perhaps he doesn’t need to use any such obvious subterfuge. “No,” she said. “That isn’t your name.”

  “Then what should my name be?”

  “I will call you Typhōn,” she said. From Hēsiodos: the horrible being who fought with Zeus, son of Gaia (hence the escort’s human appearance) and Tartaros; a deeply buried monster of limitless evil…. That name might keep her on her guard.

  The escort nodded. “Typhōn it is.”

  Without warning, the bubble sped away from the rear wall. There was no way she could judge their speed; she felt no motion. All around, the darkness seemed filled with subliminal rainbows. Glancing up, she saw a myriad faint beams of light traveling in parallel from the triangular whiteness ahead, over and behind them, into the wall, where they vanished. The triangle grew larger and brighter; they were obviously approaching something, but what she could not be sure.

  Hypnotized, Rhita stared until the whiteness filled her vision, a brilliant, almost dazzling luminosity with a pearly quality that both awed and soothed her. This was the light in which a god might come clothed. Those gods I don’t really believe in, she thought. They’re still inside me, though. Athene and Astarte and Isis and Aser and Aserapis and Zeus…and now Typhōn.

  Suddenly the light surrounded her, and the blackness became a yawning wall or hole behind. With a sudden reorientation, she realized that she had emerged from a huge triangular prism into a surrounding bath of pearly light. She turned and saw the dark equilateral mouth receding. It was framed by a thin line of sullen red of a richness and elegance hard to describe—a color that seemed to carry within it the qualities of serene dignity, vibrant life and horrendous violence all at once.

  “Where am I?” she asked, her voice no more than a whisper.

  “Behind us is a vessel. We are in a vacuum, within a tube of glowing gases. We will descend through this tube momentarily.”

  She still had no clear idea where they were. Her stomach had knotted; so much strangeness, she decided, was not good for her. How had the sophē reacted, seeing so many strange things? There was a time when Gaia herself must have seemed strange and perhaps awful to Rhita’s grandmother.

  She held her fists to her eyes and rubbed them. They hurt. Her neck hurt from so much tense cranin
g. Her head hurt; she felt miserable again, and yet there was a beauty to the light…. She was ashamed to be in pain.

  I’m not reacting well, am I? Perhaps I should be grateful to still be sane.

  The glow intensified and she felt a momentary tingle. They passed through the boundary of the tube of pearly light. Below lay something incomprehensible, intricate like an enormous map, pale green in color, covered with white and brown lines, dotted at rhythmic intervals with processions of cone-shaped towers made up of stacked disks with rounded edges.

  Again she felt a reorientation, and saw with understanding instead of just coordinated sensation.

  They were within a closed, elongated surface round like a cylinder or a pipe, but enormous. The surface of the cylinder spread out like a Krētan textile design, all pale greens and browns and whites, or like…she quickly ran out of comparisons.

  Rhita knew where she was now. Patrikia had described many of these things—though not these patterns or colors. Above their bubble stretched the wide band of the plasma tube, much fainter now, and the impossible region called the flaw, the singularity. Perhaps the prism rode the flaw, like the Hexamon’s flawships.

  She was seeing the Way.

  40

  The Hawaiian Islands

  The Terrestrial Senate was in recess, its members scattered around the Pacific Rim. One influential Terrestrial senator had remained in Honolulu, however, and Garry Lanier arranged for a meeting with him.

  Suli Ram Kikura and Karen accompanied Lanier to Earth; their object was sabotage.

  Lanier knew Robert Kanazawa, senior senator from the Pacific Nations, from fifty years before; they had met as young officers in the Navy. Kanazawa had gone on to become a submariner, Lanier a pilot; their ways had parted until the Recovery, when they had met again in a Nexus plenary session on Thistledown. They had managed to cross paths every few years until Lanier’s retirement. He deeply respected Kanazawa; the man had survived the Death in a U.S. Navy submarine, had worked in California to reestablish civilian authority, and had become senior senator twenty years before.