Mortal Remains

by Christopher Evans

  Nina was also awake. She looked as fraught as me.

  “Did you dream it?”

  “I was there with you. I heard you speak. I was with Cori.”

  It took a moment for this to register. “You were with the daughter? In her head?”

  “Only when they were on-line in the shrine. I went into her. Then I heard your voice.”

  The room began to lighten. The door opened. Chloe and Lucian came in.

  They were dressed as before and were as imperturbable as ever. Nina and I were holding one another, and I realized she was naked under the sheets. Had we made love? I had no memory of it.

  “I want to know what’s going on,” I said. “What are you doing to us?”

  They took two chairs from beside the bed and sat down, almost demurely. They were unremarkable white chairs, but I had never noticed them before. I kept expecting them to stretch their arms or start hopping around the room, but to all appearances they were inert.

  “We haven’t deliberately been keeping things from you,” Chloe said. “There’s much you have to know, but it’s only been possible to tell you a little at a time.”

  “I want to know about the dreams,” I said. “I want to know what they are.”

  “Your dreams are real,” Lucian said. “At least, they represent events that have actually occurred in the recent past.”

  “As we explained,” said Chloe, “it’s a useful way for you to experience the world into which you’ve been reborn. But there’s more than that. The story that’s been unfolding isn’t yet finished.”

  “Are these dead people?” Nina asked.

  “No, no,” said Chloe. “Indeed not. We know their stories through their various communions with the Noosphere.”

  “They are the most private and sacred transactions,” Lucian added. “But since you aren’t truly of our world, we didn’t hesitate to pass them on. Their tale lies at the centre of the great crisis which faces the whole of humanity.”

  I laughed out loud at this. It was as much an angry laugh as an incredulous one.

  “Are you going to insult us with clichés?” I said. The two of them looked like a pair of precocious, self-satisfied, overgrown children. I wanted to shake them out of their smugness.

  “Lucian isn’t exaggerating,” Chloe said. “The Dementia is spreading, and there are other dangers. We’ve fed you the story so far for two reasons—first to inform, second to ask for your help.”

  I expected more, but they simply sat there, hands in their laps. They had none of the mannerisms of ordinary people, no tics or twitches or signs of self-consciousness.

  “Our help?” said Nina.

  Lucian gave a solemn nod. “You two are apart from things, of ancient genetic stock, uncontaminated. You are unique.”

  I snorted my scepticism. “I don’t feel unique. I feel like some sort of … victim. An experimental subject.”

  Chloe frowned. “We understand. We honestly do. But how else could we have revived you? How else could we have brought you gently to an understanding and acceptance of a world so very different from anything you remember?”

  “I remember nothing, that’s the problem!”

  “Nevertheless,” said Lucian, “you’re aware of what is strange and what is familiar, aren’t you? Had we brought you into this world without any mental preparation whatsoever, then it’s more than likely your minds would have ceased to function in any sane way.”

  “This is insane!”

  “From your perspective, of course it is. Yet there’s no choice but to accept it because it is real. We are real.”

  “It will be even easier to accept,” Chloe added, “when you can participate in it.”

  Nina found my hand under the bedsheets. She held on tight.

  “Are you going to release us?” I said. “To send us out there?” I pointed towards the window. The lunar day.

  “We have a different sort of participation in mind,” Lucian said. “There’s still more than we’ve revealed to you so far, but I would ask you to be patient, to let the story unfold in its proper course.”

  “To do that,” Chloe said, “it will be necessary for you both to dream again.”

  They appeared so perfect, and that in itself was irritating. There was nothing at all intimidating in their manner, just the constant voice of sweet reason. But their world was a world where nothing could be taken for granted, where the bizarre was commonplace.

  “And if we say no?” I said.

  “There’s no compulsion. But you two are perhaps the only ones who can help us.”

  “Why?” I said. “How? What do you want from us?”

  “We want you to dream again,” said Chloe. “To see what is possible. To understand as much as you can. And then, we hope, to assist us.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  Chloe smiled. “You’re almost fully recovered. You can be free agents, go out into the Noospace to make what lives you wish.”

  The Noospace. I understood it as the physical counterpart of the Noosphere, every place in the Solar System where humans lived. I understood it, but I had only experienced its reality by proxy.

  “Just like that?” I said.

  “Of course.”

  I didn’t believe it would be that simple. Even if they were prepared to let us walk out, it obviously wouldn’t be that simple.

  “You’ll never let us go.”

  “Naturally we hope you’ll stay,” Lucian said. “At least for a while. But it’s your choice. What we want most is your trust and cooperation.”

  I felt Nina’s grip on me relaxing a little.

  “You’re asking a lot of us,” she said.

  “We realize that,” Chloe responded. “Though in a way we’re asking nothing of you except that you allow us to continue the story.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Can I see your hand?” I said to Chloe.

  She was surprised, but rose and came forward, holding it out, palm downward.

  I grasped it, then pinched a fold of skin on its back. Chloe flinched, mouth opening in surprise.

  They were flesh and blood. No different in make-up from Nina and myself.

  “I need to speak to Nina,” I said. “Alone.”

  Lucian got up. Without another word, he and Chloe withdrew.

  I waited until the door closed behind them, listened for the sound of their footsteps. I heard nothing. Was the room monitored? Could they hear and see everything anyway? The question was academic. If they could infiltrate our dreams at will, then it was unlikely even our thoughts could be kept secret from them.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked Nina.

  “What can we do?”

  “We could walk out of here. See what happens.”

  She looked askance at me. “Are you serious?”

  “It’s an option.”

  “And go where?”

  I said the first thing that came into my head: “Maybe they’d give us passage to Earth. We must have come from there originally.”

  It was an assumption: I had no evidence.

  Nina wasn’t taken by the suggestion. “We’d be like innocents abroad.” She was perfectly at ease in her nakedness beside me. “Doesn’t the idea scare you? It scares me. Even more than staying here.”

  It hadn’t been a serious proposal. Apart from anything else, I knew I was too weak to go walkabout.

  “So what are you saying? We go along with what they want?”

  “Do we have any other choice?”

  She was calm, matter-of-fact. And of course she was right. But I didn’t like it one bit.

  “Whoever I was before,” I said, “I’m not used to taking things lying down.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, and then she gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Although a few things are better that way.”

  I had no memory of any intimacy we had shared. And I wanted it—as I knew I would have wanted her.

  “I must be on the mend,” I said. �
��Something’s stirring down there.”

  She laughed.

  But we both knew that now was not the time. We knew that we were going to have to find out how the story ended.

  Eight

  Nina and I stood with Chloe and Lucian in a bright tunnel that was somewhere below ground. I knew this without being able to remember how we had got there.

  “We were born here,” Chloe was saying as if in answer to a question, “paired off together at birth.”

  “You’re brother and sister?” Nina asked.

  She shook her head. “Every year foetuses melded from promising gene lines are brought to term here on the Noosphere. The children are raised and trained by those in the service of everyone in the Settled Worlds.”

  As my eyes adjusted to the bright light, I could see figures, men and women, some sitting at consoles that resembled prayer terminals, others moving down umbilical corridors that fed into a huge central chamber. We ourselves were approaching the end of one such corridor, though we were not walking and nor did our feet appear to be touching anything palpable. It was as if we were slowly gliding down a tunnel of light.

  I accepted this, as I had accepted everything in my dreams. It was so strange and unreal that I had no reaction to it at all.

  “In our case,” Lucian was saying, “we were tutored in the many special duties which it is necessary for the Advocates to perform.”

  This brought me up short, and to my surprise we seemed to stop moving.

  “You mean you two are going to replace Julius and Orela?”

  “If only it were that simple,” Lucian replied. “The mental capacities demanded of the Advocates can’t be bred, nor can they always be brought to fruition even when carefully nurtured.”

  We began moving on again. The corridor opened up, and we were looking down on something vast and incredibly intricate. It was impossible to say whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral because it seemed to combine aspects of all three. It resembled a globular many-spiked crystal which shone gold and silver, yet it also had the aspect of an enormous flower, and again of an undersea creature whose petalled spines were responsive to unseen currents. Around it, swarming like slow-moving insects, were men and women, some tending peripheral organics, others engaged in tasks I could not even guess at.

  Nina was looking down with a wonderment that I must have shown as well.

  “Many of us were born here,” Chloe was saying, “and most remain to serve the Noosphere in whatever capacity they can. But to become an Advocate—that’s beyond the capabilities of any but the most gifted and mentally resilient.”

  “The training is arduous,” Lucian continued. “The Advocates must possess the capacity to enter into the Noosphere and partake of the millions of minds who may be using shrines on every habitation of the Noospace. They must be able to comprehend and empathize with their fears and desires. They must be able to communicate those desires so that the will of the people prevails.”

  “Most will fail the test ultimately,” said Chloe. “As we did. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be of use. We, and many others like us, remain servants in less elevated but no less important capacities. We monitor and process information from the constant communion of souls within the Noosphere, whether through private prayers or public votes.”

  Lucian indicated the radiant thing at the centre of the chamber: now it was like a golden sun bursting with innumerable spears of light.

  “This is the heart of the Noosphere—the central coordinating matrix which stores communions and holds the psyches of the departed.”

  “Let me get this clear,” I said. “Whenever someone uses a shrine, their prayers are recorded here?”

  “Better to say that they are processed. In absolute confidence, of course. But how else could it be? How else can the Advocates learn what the people want? How else could we act on their wishes?”

  “I thought they were communing with their ancestors.”

  “And so they are. But they expect practical results from their prayers, and these we endeavour to provide.”

  We spiralled slowly down and around the golden heart of the Noosphere, its radiance bright but undazzling. It was hard to imagine that billions of departed souls were contained within it. None of the workers who attended it paid us any heed. They were reduced to silhouettes by its light.

  “If the people express their wishes through the shrines,” said Nina, “then why do you need Advocates?”

  “Because they are the human faces of the Noosphere,” Chloe said. “No community can survive without personifications of leadership. They are meant to represent the pinnacle of mortality, the embodiment of all that is best and wise in the human species.”

  We were gliding slowly away now, another corridor closing around us. Nina slipped her hand into mine.

  “Are Julius and Orela mortal?” she asked.

  The corridor was growing dimmer, narrower. Ahead of us it curved away into darkness.

  “In theory,” Lucian said, “their life terms are the same as everyone else’s. One hundred years.”

  “But Julius and Orela are older than that, aren’t they?”

  “Indeed,” Chloe said pointedly. “And therein lies our dilemma.”

  Without any obvious transition, we were suddenly back inside my room. As if we had never left. I had already witnessed too many wonders even to question it.

  “Julius and Orela,” Chloe was saying, “are unfortunately a central complication in the urgent matters which concern us.”

  “A complication?”

  “You mustn’t think us disloyal. You have to understand that our prime concern is with the Noosphere and those who use it—the vast communality of the human race. Julius and Orela are representatives, not rulers.”

  “And you’re unhappy with them?”

  “We’re concerned that their interests are no longer the same as those they serve.”

  I remembered something from one of my dreams.

  “Are they unstable?”

  “They’re serving beyond their time,” Lucian said. “That fact creates many imponderables.”

  “There are sound reasons for having a fixed span of mortality,” Chloe said. “It’s not simply, as you might suppose, a question of population limitation. Though we can halt the decay of flesh, we can’t prevent the mind from eventually beginning to wither through sheer weight of experience. Beyond a hundred years, there is the increasing risk of dislocation, imbalance and even insanity.”

  “Julius and Orela are now twenty years beyond their allotted span,” Lucian said. “They’ve held their positions for more than sixty. In the past, most Advocates served little longer than twenty-five years. Then they would either pass on or retire to live out their lives in private.”

  “You saw the shrine of Oldengland,” Chloe said. “He was one of the first Advocates.”

  “The tradition is that the Advocates choose their successors during their terms,” Lucian continued. “Unfortunately, Julius and Orela have consistently rejected the candidates which the Noosphere has produced over the past half-century. Successors in waiting should have been adopted many years ago, but none has been.”

  “They rejected you two?”

  “You must understand,” said Lucian, “this isn’t a matter of personal grievance. To become Advocate is to surrender your own life entirely to the service of humanity. At least, that was formerly the case. For us personally there was some relief in being spared this sacrifice. Nevertheless we, and others like us, have come to believe that Julius and Orela are deliberately obstructing the appointment of their successors.”

  “Do they have children of their own?” Nina asked.

  Chloe shook her head. “It’s a condition that they accept sterility, and that any children previously sired are ineligible for the position. There’s no dynastic component. The appointments are made purely on individual merit.”

  “It sounds to me as if they just want to cling to their status.”


  “That’s what we fear,” Chloe agreed. “We certainly believe that their judgement had become increasingly clouded the longer they’ve remained in office.”

  “Apart from anything else,” said Lucian, “it sets a very bad example. How long will the people continue to accept the wisdom of a hundred-year span if their representatives are blatantly living on beyond their terms?”

  “Of course,” Chloe said, “Julius and Orela insist publicly that they’re merely holding their offices in trust until suitable successors are found.”

  “And the people believe this?”

  “The Advocates are popular. They’ve always travelled widely among the worlds of the Noospace. Both have the common touch, and both have increasingly used their positions blatantly to court popularity. That’s why we can’t enforce the appointment of successors against their wishes. Yet the need is very pressing, especially now that the Dementia is beginning to spread unchecked.”

  “Just what is this sickness?” I said. “It’s hard to believe that no one has any idea what causes it.”

  “You’ve seen its effects,” said Chloe. “It’s a form of mental derangement characterized by violent mania and a complete loss of social control. Until we isolate the infective agent, we can do nothing except attempt to contain it. Unfortunately the Advocates don’t seem to appreciate the extent of the danger. They make public shows of concern to appease the people, but little beyond that.”

  “I thought they’d established the Sanctuary and organized the plagueships.”

  “That’s true,” Lucian conceded. “But it was done without consulting the Noocracy or the people at large. We know nothing of what treatment is being carried out. The biotecs assembled there are answerable only to Orela and Julius themselves.”

  “We’re convinced,” said Chloe, “that they’ve both forgotten that they’re servants rather than leaders. They’ve become secretive and exclusive. That is why it’s vital we appoint successors.”

  “Somehow,” Nina said, “this is connected with the womb, isn’t it?”