Zima Blue and Other Stories

by Alastair Reynolds

‘Who’s to say that you do?’

  ‘I admit it’s speculative. But there is something rather beautiful and symmetrical about it, don’t you think? In the universes where there is intelligent life, one or more sentient individuals will eventually ask the same questions I asked myself, and follow them through to this point of penultimate understanding. When they achieve enlightenment, they exceed the critical density and become baby universes in their own right. They become what they sought to understand.’

  ‘You have no proof of this.’

  ‘No, but I have one hell of a gut feeling. There is, of course, only one way to know for sure. At the moment of understanding, I’ll know whether this happens or not.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t—?’

  ‘I’ll still have achieved my goal. I’ll know that, even as I’m crushed out of existence. If, on the other hand, it does happen . . . then I won’t be crushed at all. My consciousness will continue, on the other side, embedded in the fabric of space and time itself.’ John paused, for something had occurred to him. ‘I’ll have become something very close to—’

  ‘Don’t say it, please,’ the Kind interjected.

  ‘All right, I won’t. But you see now why I hesitate. This final step will take me as far from humanity as all the steps that have preceded it. It’s not something I’m about to take lightly.’

  ‘You shouldn’t.’

  ‘The others . . .’ John began, before trailing off, aware of the fear and doubt in his voice. ‘What did they do, when they got this far? Did they hesitate? Did they just storm on through?’

  ‘Only three have preceded you, in all of recorded history. Two underwent gravitational collapse: we can show you the black holes they became, if you wish.’

  ‘I’ll pass. Tell me about the third.’

  ‘The third chose a different path. He elected to split his consciousness into two streams, by dividing and reallocating portions of his architecture. One component continued with the quest for ultimate understanding, while the other retreated, assuming a less-dense embodiment that carried no risk of collapse.’

  ‘What happened to the component that continued?’

  ‘Again,’ the Kind said, with the merest flicker of amusement at John’s expense, ‘we’d be delighted to show you the results.’

  ‘And the other half? How could he have preserved the understanding he’d achieved, if he backtracked to a simpler architecture?’

  ‘He couldn’t. That’s exactly the point.’

  ‘I don’t follow. Understanding required a certain level of complexity. He couldn’t have retained that understanding if he stripped himself back.’

  ‘He didn’t. He did, however, retain the memory of having understood. That, for him, was sufficient.’

  ‘Just the memory?’

  ‘Precisely that. He’d glimpsed enlightenment. He didn’t need to retain every detail of that glimpse to know he’d seen it.’

  ‘But that’s not understanding,’ John said exasperatedly. ‘It’s a crude approximation, like the postcard instead of the view.’

  ‘Better than being crushed out of existence, though. The being under discussion seemed adequately content with the compromise.’

  ‘And you think I will be too?’

  ‘We think you should at least consider the possibility.’

  ‘I will. But I’ll need time to think about it.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Just a bit.’

  ‘All right,’ the Kind said. ‘But just don’t think too hard about it.’

  Much less than a million years later, John announced to the Kind that he wished to follow the example of the third sentient being they had mentioned. He would partition his consciousness into two streams; one would continue towards final enlightenment, the other would assume a simpler and safer architecture, necessarily incapable of emulating his present degree of understanding. For John, the process of dividing himself was as fraught and delicate as any of the transformations he had hitherto undergone. It required all of the skill of the Kind to effect the change in such a way as to allow the preservation of memories, even as his mind was whittled back to a mere sketch of itself. But by turns it was done, and the two Johns were both physically and mentally distinct: the one still poised on the edge of gravitational annihilation, only a thought away from transcendence, the other observing matters from a safe distance.

  So it was that Simple John witnessed the collapse and in-fall of his more complex self: an event as sudden and violent as any natural stellar catastrophe in recent galactic times. In that moment of understanding, he had pushed his own architecture to the limit. Somewhere in him, matter and energy collapsed to open a howling aperture to a new creation. He had reached the conclusion of his quest.

  In the last nanoseconds of his physical existence, however - before he was sucked under the event horizon, beyond which no information could ever emerge - Complex John did at least manage to encode and transmit a parting wave of gravitational energy, a message to his other half.

  The content was very brief.

  It said only: ‘Now I get it.’

  That might have been the end of it, but shortly afterwards Simple John took a decision that was to return him to his starting point. He carried now the memory of near-enlightenment, and the memory was - as the Kind had promised, despite John’s natural scepticism - very nearly as illuminating as the thing itself. In some ways, perhaps more so - it was small and polished and gemlike, and he could examine it from different angles, quite unlike the unwieldy immersiveness of the experience itself, from which the memory had been expertly distilled.

  But why, he wondered, stop there? If he could revert back to this simplified architecture and still retain the memory of what he had been before, why not take things further?

  Why not go all the way back?

  The descent from near-enlightenment was not a thing to be rushed, for at every stage - as his evolved faculties were stripped back and discarded - he had to be assured that the chain of memory remained unbroken. As he approached being human again, he knew on an intellectual level that what he now carried was not the memory of understanding, but the memory of a memory of a memory . . . a pale, diminished, reflected thing, but no less authentic for that. It still felt genuine to John, and now - as they packed his wet cellular mind back into the stifling cage of a Homo sapiens skull - that was all that truly mattered.

  And so it came time for him to return to Mars.

  Mars by then was a green and blue marble of a world much like old Earth. Despite the passage of time the rekindled human civilisation had spread no farther than the solar system, and - since Earth was out of bounds - Mars remained its capital. Sixteen million people lived there now, many of them gathered into small communities scattered around the gentle foot slopes of Pavonis Mons. Deep inside Mars, a lattice of artificial black holes created a surface gravity indistinguishable from that of old Earth. Mammoth sunken buttresses kept the ancient landscape from falling in on itself. The seas were soupy with life; the atmosphere thick and warm, brimming with insects and birds.

  Certain things had been preserved since John’s departure. The spiralling yellow road, for instance, still wormed its way to the summit of Pavonis Mons, and pilgrims made the long but hardly arduous ascent, pausing here and there at the many pennanted teahouses and hostels that lined the route. Though they belonged to different creeds, all remembered John in some form or another, and many of their creeds spoke of the day when he would come back to Mars. To this end, the smooth, circular plateau at the top of the volcano had been kept clear, awaiting the day of John’s return. Monks brushed the dust from it with great brooms. Pilgrims circled the plateau, but none ventured very far inwards from the edge.

  John, human again, dropped from the sky in a cradle of alien force. It was day, but no one witnessed his arrival. The Kind had arranged an invisibility barrier around him, so that from a distance he resembled only a pillar of warm air, causing the scene behind him to tremble sligh
tly as in a mirage.

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ the Kind asked. ‘You’ve been gone a long time. They may have some trouble dealing with your return.’

  John adjusted the star-shaped spectacles he had selected for his return to Mars, settling them onto the small nub of his nose.

  ‘They’ll get used to me sooner or later.’

  ‘They’ll expect words of wisdom. When they don’t get any, they’re likely to be disappointed. “Now I get it” isn’t likely to pass muster.’

  ‘They’ll get over it.’

  ‘You may wish to dispense some harmless platitudes, just enough to keep them guessing. We can suggest some, if you’d like: we’ve had considerable practice at this sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I’m just going to be straight with them. I came, I saw, I backed off. But I did see it, and I do remember seeing it. I think it all makes sense.’

  ‘“I think it all makes sense,”’ the Kind repeated. ‘That’s the best you’re going to give them?’

  ‘It was my quest. I never said it had to measure up to anyone else’s expectations.’ John ran a hand over his scalp, flattening down his thin, auburn thatch against the air currents in the invisibility field. He took a step forwards, teetering on the huge red boots he had selected for his return. ‘How do I look, anyway?’

  ‘Not quite the way you started out. Is there any particular reason for the physiological changes, the costume?’

  John shrugged. ‘None in particular.’

  ‘Fine, then. You’ll knock them out. That is the appropriate turn of phrase, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’ll do. I guess this is it, then . . . I step through here, and I’m back with people. Right?’

  ‘Right. You have plans, we take it?’

  ‘Nothing set in stone. See how things go, I thought. Maybe I’ll settle down, maybe I won’t. I’ve been on my own for a long time now; fitting back into human society isn’t going to be a breeze. Especially some weird, futuristic human society that halfway thinks I’m some kind of god.’

  ‘You’ll manage.’

  John hesitated, ready to step through into daylight, into full visibility. ‘Thanks. For everything.’

  ‘It was our pleasure.’

  ‘What about you, now?’

  ‘We’ll move on,’ the Kind said. ‘Find someone else in need of help. Perhaps we’ll swing by again, further down the line, see how you’re all doing.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  There was an awkward lull in the conversation.

  ‘John, there is one thing we need to tell you before you go.’

  He heard something in the Kind’s tone that, in all their time together, was new to him.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We lied to you.’

  He let out a small, involuntary laugh; it was the last thing he had been expecting. He did not think the Kind had ever once spoken an untruth to him.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘The third sentient being we spoke about . . . the one that split itself into two consciousness streams?’

  John nodded. ‘What about it?’

  ‘It didn’t exist. It was a story we made up, to persuade you to follow that course of action. In truth, you were the first to do such a thing. No other entity had reached such a final stage of enlightenment without continuing on to final collapse.’

  John absorbed that, then nodded slowly. ‘I see.’

  ‘We hope you are not too angry with us.’

  ‘Why did you lie?’

  ‘Because we had grown to like you. It was wrong . . . the choice should have been yours, uncontaminated by our lies . . . but without that example, we did not think you would have chosen the route you did. And then we would have lost you, and you would not be standing here, with the memories that you have.’

  ‘I see,’ he said again, softer this time.

  ‘Are you cross with us?’

  John waited a little while before answering. ‘I should be, I suppose. But really, I’m not. You’re probably right: I would have carried on. And given what I know now - given the memories I have - I’m glad this part of me didn’t.’

  ‘Then it was the right thing to do?’

  ‘It was a white lie. There are worse things.’

  ‘Thank you, John.’

  ‘I guess the next time you meet someone like me - some other sentient being engaged on that quest - you won’t have to lie, will you?’

  ‘Not now, no.’

  ‘Then we’ll let it be. I’m cool with the way things turned out.’ John was about to step outside, but then something occurred to him. He fought to keep the playful expression from his face. ‘But I can’t let you get away without at least doing one final favour for me. I know it’s a lot to ask after you’ve done so much—’

  ‘Whatever it is, we will strive to do our best.’

  John pointed across the mirror-smooth surface of the plateau, to the circling line of distant pilgrims. ‘I’m going to step outside in a moment, onto Pavonis Mons. But I don’t want to scare the living daylights out of them by just walking out of thin air with no warning.’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’

  John was still pointing. ‘You’re going to make something appear before I do. Given your abilities, I don’t think it will tax you very much.’

  ‘What is it that you would like?’

  ‘A white piano,’ John said. ‘But not just any old piano. It has to be a Bösendorfer grand. I was one once, remember?’

  ‘But this one would be smaller, we take it?’

  ‘Yes,’ John said, nodding agreeably. ‘A lot smaller. Small enough that I can sit at the keyboard. So you’d better put a stool by it as well.’

  Swift machinery darted through the air, quick as lightning. A piano assumed startling solidity, and then a red-cushioned stool beside it. Across the plateau, one or two pilgrims had already observed its arrival. They were gesticulating excitedly, and the news was spreading fast.

  ‘Is that all?’

  John tapped the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. ‘There’s one final thing. By the time I reach that stool, I need to be able to play the piano. I made music before, but that was different. Now I need to do it with my fingers, the old way. Think you can oblige?’

  ‘We have much knowledge of music. The necessary neural scripting can be implemented by the time you arrive at the Bösendorfer. There may be a slight headache—’

  ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘It only remains to ask . . . is there anything in particular you want to play?’

  ‘Actually,’ John said, stretching his fingers in readiness for the performance, ‘there is one song I had in mind. It’s about Mars, as it happens.’

  ‘Understanding Space and Time’ is a story with a long genesis, if ever there was one. Early in 2001, I was invited to contribute a story to the Courier, UNESCO’s magazine of science and culture. They were putting together a special issue on cosmology and the universe and they wondered if I might be able to come up with something relevant . . . in about 750 words. I said I’d think about it, while not being very optimistic of my chances. My stories tended to come in around the 7000-word mark, at the very minimum. Still, I thought it over as I cycled home, and somewhere between work and the front door I had an idea. I wrote it up that evening, in fact, and submitted it to UNESCO the following morning. It was 1500 words, twice what they wanted, but it was significantly shorter than anything I’d ever produced before. UNESCO liked it, even said they might use it, but they still wondered if I couldn’t come up with something shorter. I said no, that was as short as it got for me, and left it at that. But by the time I arrived home that evening, I’d had an idea for an even shorter piece, one that seemed to address the theme of the issue even better than the longer piece. I wrote this new story. It was called ‘Fresco’. It came in at 750 words, and it was duly published in the Courier. Since the magazine was printed simultaneously in many languages, ‘Fresco’ i
nstantly became my most widely translated story. It’s almost certainly the only thing of mine that will ever make it into Thai.

  That left the other story without a home, though. I took it to Eastercon, one of the main UK science fiction conventions, and read it before a nonplussed audience. Maybe it needed to be a bit longer: 1500 words really was tight for a story about the last man alive. (‘Fresco’, by contrast, had no real characters in it at all, so worked better at even shorter length.) So I took the story back home, moved house and kept working on it on and off for the next four and a half years. I expanded it from 1500 words to 10,000. In the meantime I threw out nearly everything of the original story, leaving it only as a faint structural skeleton. And when I wasn’t busy with something else, or was stuck for inspiration on whatever was the current big project, I’d open the file on ‘In the Beginning’ and tinker with it a bit.