Eternity

by Greg Bear

  Entry to a world populated by humans would be most useful to command oversight, the Jart said within Olmy. He turned to Ry Oyu. “They might have found her. Did they?”

  “I don’t know,” Ry Oyu said. “I don’t know the answers to a good many questions, regrettably. Our jobs would be a lot easier if I did.”

  Korzenowski scanned the latitude ahead in more detail as they came closer. Four gates remained open, though there was little activity around them now.

  The triangle filled their forward view. The Engineer was aware of some abrupt change around them; passage through a kind of traction field, perhaps, or suspension of the flawship’s inertial damping.

  The flawship entered the station’s dark triangle like a spear sliding slowly into a black pool. Beyond was more darkness, as if the pool were black paint, absorbing all light, all information; telling nothing.

  Olmy’s Jart had no idea what awaited them. Things had changed greatly since its capture; little was familiar, including the design of the flaw station.

  Ry Oyu floated toward Korzenowski and curled up beside him. “This is the area where I should find Patricia’s world,” he said. “If I have an opportunity to fulfill my obligations to her, I’ll need to copy her Mystery…”

  They hadn’t brought along the necessary equipment. “How?” Korzenowski asked.

  “This much I have the power to do,” Ry Oyu said. “Close your eyes, please.”

  The gate-opener did not even touch him. A few seconds of warmth scattering through his head and body, the opposite of tingling, and it was over. Korzenowski opened his eyes. He did not feel any different.

  “Just a copy,” Ry Oyu said quietly.

  The darkness at the flawship’s nose suddenly parted and they stared at a segment of the Way perhaps three hundred kilometers long. Blocking the segment was a black radiance, deeply scalloped around its circumference, fully fifty kilometers in diameter. The walls of the Way leading up to this formation were brazen, undisturbed.

  We will not be allowed to pass, the Jart told Olmy. That is a barrier to protect command individuals.

  Olmy slowed the flawship to a few hundred kilometers per hour. A reception? he asked the Jart.

  Very unusual for command individuals to come this far >south<.

  He slowed the flawship to a crawl now, as the black shape filled their northern view. Green lines spun outward from the center of the shape and made graceful arcs to the circumference of the Way.

  “I think we’ve been noticed,” Olmy said.

  The arcs rose and neatly encased them. Dozens of transparent bubbles, perhaps a meter and a half in diameter, each containing a tiny black smudge like ink in water, flowed toward the flawship along the green lines.

  “Traction fields, or something equivalent,” Korzenowski said. “Do they know how to communicate with us?”

  “They don’t know any of our languages…” Olmy said.

  A voice issued from the console. “We welcome the representatives of descendant command. Please accept the passage of our transport vehicles.”

  “That was English,” Korzenowski commented dryly. The message was repeated in Spanish, then in a language very similar to Greek, and another language similar to Chinese. Other languages were less identifiable. At the conclusion of the translations, the bubbles took formation in concentric rings around the flawship.

  Olmy felt the Jart take control of his movements again. The Jart sent another signal to the barrier through the flawship radio transmitters. It then moved Olmy to the transparent bow and waited there.

  One of the green arcs flared suddenly and illuminated the flawship’s bow. Olmy was surrounded by something like St. Elmo’s fire; his body convulsed. Korzenowski had tracted halfway toward his friend when the display stopped. Olmy rotated to face them with a wan smile. “Inspection,” he said. “They still don’t trust us completely.”

  “Did you pass?” Korzenowski asked.

  “So far, so good.”

  “Very advanced,” Ry Oyu said. Korzenowski thought he detected a hint of irony.

  “Remove the ship from the flaw,” came a return signal in English. Olmy went to the console and instructed the flawship to unstring itself.

  “Ride within the bubble nearest your ship’s door.”

  They put on environment packs and stood by the hatchway. When it opened, a bubble expanded to about four meters in diameter and fastened itself around the hatch with a sucking, sizzling sound. The black nebulosity within congealed to make a railed platform.

  “Our phaeton,” Korzenowski said, following Olmy onto the platform. A quiet hissing surrounded them; cool air smelling faintly musty, sweet, like young beer, blew against their faces. The bubble withdrew, sealing itself, and carried them along the green arcs toward a point just outside the center of the barrier. The flaw in this region was an uncharacteristic sour-orange color, carrying the additional burden of Jart information; it cast a feeble glow against the barrier’s gray-black surface.

  Four green arcs cradled the flawship and guided it toward the walls of the Way. Olmy looked at the descending ship with a twinge of regret: their last contact with the Hexamon. Arms folded, still not entirely resigned, Korzenowski faced the featureless barrier surface toward which they were being ferried. His eyes carried little of Patricia’s impression now; she seemed to have sunk back deep into his psyche, biding her time.

  Ry Oyu put his hand on the Engineer’s shoulder. “In our youth,” he said, “we would have called this an adventure.”

  “In my youth, I always preferred thinking to adventuring,” Korzenowski replied.

  The barrier absorbed the bubble, and again they were in darkness. Olmy would have been more comfortable if the Jart communicated with him, but it was silent; nothing had passed between them since the inspection. He could still feel it within him, as an oyster must feel a grain of sand…

  When they finished their passage through the barrier, all that was human lay behind them. The bubble hovered above a broad forest-green floor. Perhaps a hundred meters away, the floor met a wall of lighter green. There did not seem to be a ceiling; merely a pale, featureless void.

  “You will meet with command individuals,” said a bodiless voice in the bubble.

  “Fine,” Korzenowski said, lips straight and tight. “Let’s get on with it.”

  The green wall parted like a curtain and the bubble passed through. Only now did Olmy feel the Jart react within him; it seemed to change its shape, rearrange its points of contact with his mentality, stiffen.

  “Big day for my conquering companion,” he said. “Time for debriefing.”

  They passed along a proscenium, flanked on both sides by processions of identical sculptures resembling abstract chrome-plated scorpions. Their long tail-like abdomens stuck into the green floor, stiffly supporting gleaming bodies; their abstracted legs and claws raised and spread in formal salute.

  Around and between these shapes floated fist-sized orange and green balls of light.

  “What are they?” Korzenowski asked Olmy, pointing at the sculptures.

  “I don’t know,” Olmy said. “My guide is silent.”

  Korzenowski made a face and nodded, as if that was the least they could expect. “Even their architecture is menacing,” he said. “Damn us all for going this far.”

  Olmy could only agree. Whatever happened to those far-off days of duty and research and nothing but inner turmoil? Those times seemed positively peaceful and desirable. What he feared now was not so much death as something nameless, perhaps coming across the exact opposite of life and humanity, the antithesis of all he believed in, and finding it was also true and indisputable; losing all reference and simply fading like an outmoded idea.

  They had already faced the strangeness of Mirsky and Ry Oyu, but these avatars had been tailored to humanity. What would Ry Oyu become to convince the Jarts?

  The proscenium opened onto a broad circle surrounded by pale, translucent sea-green cylindrical tanks, each twic
e as high as it was broad. Within the tanks black membranes waved with a calm, resilient rhythm, like misty banners.

  Directly ahead, there were no tanks, only a flat stage about a meter above the floor. Above this stage floated three obviously organic shapes, sleek and long and somewhat more massive than elephants, torsos wrapped in more misty dark banners that first obscured them, then revealed…

  Command individuals among the Jarts were incarnate organisms closest in form to the forebear originals. Whatever world had bred these figures must have been a place of poisons and death and bad dreams. They appeared, first of all, vital; there was no denying that these creatures were survivors, with their long black spike-legs and efficient armor casings wrapped around long, tapering thoraxes. They split in two near the front, each bifurcated section rearing up from the platform, displaying deep gashes along the underside. These were fringed with wrinkled appendages tipped with wickedly pointed black claws. No eyes or other sensors were visible.

  They did bear some resemblance to the body in the hidden chamber, Olmy thought. They were much more efficient-looking, however, perhaps more evolved. The dead form in the transparent box might have been a precursor, like a chimpanzee compared to a human.

  How much time had passed in the Way—decades, or millions of years?

  Do you recognize these individuals? Olmy asked the Jart within. For a long moment, it did not answer, and then it said, These are not command as known to this expediter.

  Perhaps they are not Jarts at all?

  They are my kind. There is glory in them. They have accomplished much improvement.

  Will they know you?

  They already recognize this modified expediter. Humble submission to their presence. Something else passed between them that did not fit the pidgin mental language Olmy shared with the Jart, something ominous and dark and exalted at once; a kind of murderous pride he could not classify in human emotions.

  “You’re looking bemused,” Korzenowski said to Olmy.

  “No muse at all,” Olmy said. “Those are definitely Jarts.”

  “Ah,” said Korzenowski dryly. “Our hosts.”

  The bubble came to rest at the fourth corner of a square, the command individuals occupying the other three. The misty black drapes wrapped around their bodies evaporated, and the Jarts lifted their anterior bifurcations, claws on appendages meeting delicately tip-to-tip, like sutures over twin gashes, in a manner that would have made Olmy’s skin crawl, and did make Korzenowski draw back instinctively.

  “They are quite thoroughly horrible,” he said. Olmy did not disagree; he could not remember encountering intelligent beings who looked more threatening.

  Ry Oyu stood at one edge of the bubble platform, still relaxed and undisturbed.

  Surely they’re not the most vicious-looking intelligences in the universe, Korzenowski thought. The Final Mind doubtless will encompass far worse. He glanced at Ry Oyu, who smiled and nodded as if listening and agreeing.

  The three command individuals spread their uplifted bifurcations into wider Vs.

  “We meet,” said the voice in the bubble, seeming to each of them to come from over his right shoulder. “This event is not expected. Are you one or many?”

  “We are each individual,” Ry Oyu said.

  “Which represents descendant command?”

  “I do.”

  “Is there confirming evidence?”

  “They want loaves and fishes,” Ry Oyu said in an undertone. “So be it.”

  He did not appear to do anything, but the three command individuals shivered slightly, as if struck by a cold breeze. Their upper sections closed almost to the point of joining.

  The voice said, “The testimony is adequate confirmation. What is your plan for completion?”

  Korzenowski frowned, puzzled. Ry Oyu said, “Tell them what we’ve done, and what we wish to do. Tell them who you are.”

  “My name is Konrad Korzenowski,” he said. “I designed the Way.”

  The command individuals did not react.

  “We have already begun destruction of the Way…”

  “Command individuals are aware of this,” the voice said.

  “We’ve come to finish the last of our work, to…bring one of your own back to you, and…” He stumbled over the words in his head, trying to express himself clearly and in a way non-humans might understand. “I carry part of the mentality of another human, who once did work that helped me design the Way. We wish to return this mentality to an appropriate world, in the geometry stacks…behind where we are now.” He gestured awkwardly over his shoulder, unsure even of direction. “We hope to journey on and help the Final Mind. With you, or alone.” How naive and childlike, to even think of being able to help something so vast as the Final Mind…

  “Command individuals have accessed and stored a human-occupied world in the regions you refer to,” the voice said. Then it did not speak for several long minutes. Finally, “Command is aware. Command did not create the Way. Do you have knowledge regarding human designator individual Patrikia Vaskayza or Patricia Luisa Vasquez, human duty expediter or of similar rank?”

  Korzenowski closed his eyes, then licked his lips, as if savoring some inner taste, and said. “Yes. I carry part of that individual. Do you have her, did you find her…?”

  The voice’s tone altered radically; it now sounded female.

  “This is command oversight. We have the sexually generated twice-removed progeny of designator individual Patricia Luisa Vasquez.”

  “I think they mean they have Patricia’s granddaughter,” Ry Oyu said. Olmy agreed.

  “Where did they find her?” Korzenowski asked. Eyes square and bright, he faced the command individuals. “Where did you find this woman?”

  The female-toned voice answered. “We have accessed and stored the world where human designator individual Patricia Luisa Vasquez traveled from the Way. Sexual progeny twice-removed is stored also.”

  “But not Patricia Vasquez herself?”

  “Individual Patricia Luisa Vasquez is dead.”

  “Can we speak to her granddaughter?” Ry Oyu asked.

  “This individual has been damaged by our investigations.”

  Korzenowski felt a sudden tremor of horror and despair. He struggled to control his anger—and a deeper anger, from the ghost of a grandmother who had never met this granddaughter, never even known of her existence.

  “We’d like to speak with her, damaged or not,” Ry Oyu said. “If that’s possible.”

  The command individuals wrapped themselves in shifting black cloaks again. Korzenowski turned away, sickened by this strangeness, this incomprehensibility; this casual cruelty. What had happened to the world Patricia found? What sort of world had it been before the Jarts “stored” it? In what condition was it now? Ry Oyu touched his shoulder again, and Olmy moved closer, lending support through solidarity.

  “This damaged individual is highly valued,” the female voice said. “Damage was unintentional.”

  “Let us speak with her,” Korzenowski said, his voice cracking.

  The three command individuals receded on the platform, as if through the turning of some distorting lens. A scene appeared in front of the bubble, the interior of a house of human construction, though not any home Patricia might have found in Los Angeles in the early twenty-first century…

  Rhita came out of a moiling eternity, where time was not so much lacking as non-linear and randomly arranged; true memories dancing with simulations, unorganized animal thoughts—disembodied hunger, pointless yearning, sexual desire—vying with brief moments of crystal clarity, in which she remembered her situation…and rejected it, returning to the turbulent eternity.

  In one moment of clarity, she saw herself as a hero, consciously making herself useless to her enemies by eluding them within their own incomprehensible sanctuary. In another, she realized she might never recover from this jumble, that her enemies might keep her in this state forever, and a better definition of H
ades she could not think of.

  She was worse off than any shade thirsting for blood and wine; what she thirsted for was the sweet liquor of reversed history, second chances, doors to a past not so much dead as pickled and preserved, waiting for some inhuman feast of knowledge.

  She no longer touched on the presences of Demetrios or Oresias.

  Then, at no particular moment, the tempest of chaotic escape calmed. Her thoughts were still jumbled, but what she experienced and felt was crystal clear: she stood in her grandmother’s house on Rhodos. Typhōn was with her, still human in appearance.

  She tried to escape again, back into her chaotic freedom, but suddenly noticed three human forms that did not seem to be Jarts. She did not know them. There was conversation of a sort; again, the voiceless talk of Jarts in a dream, disembodied, hideous.

  Still, now and then, in her self-imposed confusion, she managed to listen and not reject what was being said.

  There was talk of her grandmother.

  Could the two actually be humans? People from Gaia…or…again the storm grabbed her thoughts and whirled them.

  Grandmother’s Mystery.

  A memory: sharp and demanding. The sophē explaining how she had loaned a part of her psyche to a man…Magic and mystery in the Way.

  Suddenly, she stood not in a simulation of the sophē’s house, but on the stones of the temple of Athene Lindia—not in simulation, but in memory. The memory was so vivid she could feel the wind in her hair and hear the song of birds darting between the massive cream-colored columns.

  This was the memory she always returned to, a memory of peace and solitude, where she withdrew from the welter to think her own thoughts, discover her own self. She had once imagined herself as Athene in her various forms: wise woman, bringer of victory, Athene of the storms, Athene of python and owls; Athene helmeted adorner of old coins, goddess of the great and tortured city of the Hellenes. An adolescent girl could be all of those things in the space of an hour, and yet face no danger for her hubris, for Athene understood such dreams.

  Athene understood and forgave failure, even should it cost a world.

  Rhita closed her eyes and opened them again. There was talk of Patrisha which was, she remembered, the way her grandmother had sometimes pronounced her own name.