Eon

by Greg Bear

  I often meet with Joseph Rimskaya, but he is still morose and not very stimulating. I believe he is homesick and perhaps should not have defected. He plans to undergo Talsit therapy soon, though he has said that before. Beryl Wallace, the other American, we seldom see. She has been assigned to an observation party; a unique and sought-after job, in which I believe she must be serving more as a mascot than anything else, but I could be wrong. The implants can perform wonders.

  I was never an intellectual. Philosophy bored me; questions of ultimate meaning and reality seemed pointless. I did not have the capacity for far stretches of the imagination. With the implants, all that has changed. I have taken a dozen more steps on the road to being a different person.

  We have voyaged a considerable distance since achieving near light-speed. I do not believe anyone expected what is happening now.

  The Way is so complicated; even those who created it could not predict all of its possibilities.

  We now journey down a ghost Way, its local nature altered by the violence of our near light-speed passage. It has no diameter or boundaries as such; objects with mass simply cannot exist beyond a distance of more than twenty thousand kilometers from the course on which we ride. (The flaw, or singularity, vanished three months ago. Simply evaporated in a pulse of newly created particles, some of them unknown even to the Geshels.) We have traveled beyond the domain of the super-set of external universes which encompassed all our various world-lines.

  Even were we to stop now and open gates to the “outside,” whatever that may be, we would encounter realms without matter, perhaps without form or order; it is highly doubtful we would find anything familiar.

  There are an infinite number of alternatives to the Way, each originating in an alternative world-line, yet reaching beyond that world-line. Until now, Way researchers have not known quite how the alternate Ways were stacked or arranged, or indeed whether they could even be considered real. Since the Way intersects a large group of alternate world-lines—perhaps all—could there be more than one Way?

  But by traveling close to the light-Speed within the Way, we have answered these questions and found new ones to ask. We have distorted Way geometry in more than the requisite four dimensions; we have also contracted the fifth dimension, drawing the alternate Ways together.

  The Way boundaries have become transparent in a wide variety of frequencies, and we can perceive the shape of other Ways. We can select which Way we wish to inspect, using devices similar to the gate-opening clavicles. It is in observing these alternate Ways that Beryl Wallace is now occupied.

  We can even see (and in some instances, communicate with) beings in other Ways.

  So there are an infinite number of world-lines, and because of this one human artifact, an infinite number of connections between them. Our researchers devise schemes to allow us to cross over to other Ways, other super-sets of world-lines, but even with implants I have difficulty understanding what they are discussing.

  This much I do know. There are Ways where the beings of thousands of completely different universes hold commerce, exchanging in some cases only information, in other cases actually exchanging different types of space-time. Is it possible to conceive of the potential that would exist between two universes of differing qualities? Would that potential be called energy?

  Rirnskaya, morose as he is, has continued working, and has even made some significant contributions to the researches.

  He believes he has found a definition of information: the potential that exists between all time-like dimensions (time itself, and the fifth dimension separating world-lines, for instance) and space-like ‘dimensions. Wherever space and time interact, there is information, and where information can be ordered into knowledge, and knowledge can be applied, there is intelligence.

  Lest anyone reading this journal of a primitive man should think we spend our time mired in abstractions, let me also say that I am discovering the richness available to those who are willing to alter their major characteristics. The variety of emotions available to a reconfigured human mind, thinking thoughts impossible to its ancestors ...

  The emotion of-*-, describable only as something between sexual love and the joy of intellection--making love to a thought? Or &&, the true reverse of pain, not “pleasure” but a “warning” of healing, growth and change. Or (A+), the most complex emotion yet discovered, felt by those who consciously endure the change between mind configurations, and experience the broad spectrum of possibilities inherent in thinking and being.

  I have barely begun to taste the varieties of human love.

  Personalities are not necessarily isolated here; I can belong to a wide spectrum of personality aggregates, and yet still retain my individuality ... I lose nothing and gain a thousand new tastes of human affection.

  What use is it to try to measure the distances we have traveled?

  What use is the personality of the old Pavel Mirsky to comprehend them?

  Soon, I firmly resolve, I will gather up my courage and join with the extended personalities in City Memory.

  And yet with all this to occupy me, I still mourn. I still weep for the lost part of myself, still feel sad for a land I cannot return to, a land doubly inaccessible now. But the weeping is buried deeply, where even Talsit sessions have dificulty reaching ... perhaps lodged in the one area it is illegal to modify, known as Mystery. How ironic, that in this way I still feel like a Russian, and that so long as any part of me exists, it will be Russian. Because I share the same Mystery with the old Pavel Mirsky, I feel continuity. I feel ...

  An urge for the stars, yes, but more than that.

  When I was a child in Kiev (or so a few dim portions of my memory inform me) I once asked my stepfather how long people would live when the Worker’s Paradise was achieved.

  He was a computer technician, very imaginative, and he said, “Perhaps as long as they wish. Perhaps a billion years.”

  “How long is a billion years?” I asked him.

  “It is a very long time,” he said. ”An age, an eternity, time enough for all life to rise and all life to end. Some people call it an eon.”

  In geological terms, I learned later, an aeon is indeed a billion years. But the Greeks who coined the word were not so specific. They used it as a pointer to eternity, the lifetime of a universe, far more than a billion years. It was also the personification of a god’s cycle of time.

  I have survived the Worker’s Paradise. I have survived the end of my universe, and may survive countless others.

  Dear stepfather, it looks as if I will outlive the gods themselves ...

  A true eon.

  So much to learn, and so much change to look forward to.

  Each day I breathe deeply, count my choices and realize how lucky we are. If only I can convince Rimskaya. Sad man. I am free.

  Four

  Aigypto

  Year of Alexandro, 2323

  Young queen Kleopatra the 21st had just spent a long and drowsy four hours listening to the complicated testimony of five ostracized congressmen from the Oxyrrhynkhos Nome’s Boule. Their complaints, her most trusted counselor decided, were without merit, so she dismissed them with a stern smile and warned them not to take their complaints outside Aigyptos, to any other polity, or they would be exiled from the Alexandrian Oikoumen, and forced to wander east or west in the lands of the barbarians, or even worse, in Latium.

  Three times a week, Kleopatra received such complaints, selected from thousands of cases by her counselors, well aware they were mostly for show and had been predecided.

  She was not entirely happy with the limitations of royal power imposed by the Oikoumenical Boul in the time of her fathers, but it was that or exile, and an exiled eighteen-year-old queen had few places to go outside the Oikoumen. How things had changed in the past five hundred years!

  Kleopatra looked forward to her next visitor, however. She had heard many stories about the head priestess and soph of the Hypateion in Rhodos; the wo
man was legendary not only for the tale of how she had come to the Oikoumen, but for her accomplishments in the last half-century. Yet queen and priestess had never met.

  The soph Patrikia had flown in from Rhodos two days before, landing at the Rakhotis airport just west of Alexandria and then taking up privileged residence in the Mouseion until an audience could be arranged. In those two days, the soph had been taken on the virtually mandatory tours of the pyramidons of Alexandros and the Diadokhoi to observe (how tiresome, Kleopatra thought) the gold-wrapped mummies of the founders of the Alexandrian Oikoumen, and then through the surrounding pyramids and tombs of the Later Successors.

  It was said that the soph had borne the tours well, and some of her observations had been recorded for broadcast to the eighty-five nomes of the Oikoumen.

  Heralds arrived to Announce that the soph had come to the Lokhias Promontory and would shortly be at the royal residence. The counselors cleared the court and Kleopatra was surrounded by her flies, as she called them—her chamberlains and makeup maids, wiping sweat from her brow, powdering her cheeks and nose, arranging her robes around the golden throne. Across the courtyard, standing half in shadow and half in sun, was the phalanx of royal security. When they divided into two lines, one on each side of the portal, Kleopatra would assume her Attitude and welcome the sophs.

  The lines formed and the heralds went through their wearisome rituals.

  The date was Sfithis 4, old-style, Arkhimds 27, new-style.

  Kleopatra sat patiently on her throne, made of cedar from the troublesome hierarchy of loudeia, sometimes called Nea Phoenikia, sipping sparkling water from Gallia out of a cup manufactured in Metascythia. Thus in every single day she tried to utilize goods from the nomes, polities and friendly nations all around, knowing that they would feel honored and that their peoples would feel proud for serving the oldest of the old empires, the Alexandrian Oikoumen. It would be well for the sophs to see Kleopatra fulfilling her duties, for in truth the young queen had little else to do; the Boul and the Council of Elected Speakers now made the truly important decisions, in the Athenian manner.

  The great bronze doors of Theotokopolos swung wide and the procession began. Kleopatra ignored the rapidly-swelling crowd of courtiers and chamberlains and petty politicians. Her eyes went immediately to the sophfi Patrikia, entering the chamber supported on the arms of her two sons, themselves middle-aged.

  The priestess wore a gown of black Chin-Ching silk, simple and elegant, with a star above one breast and a moon above the other. Her hair was long, still luxuriantly thick and dark; her face appeared youthful despite her seventy-four years, her eyes black and square and penetrating. Kleopatra met those eyes with difficulty; they seemed dangerous, too provocative.

  “Welcome,” she said, deliberately eschewing all the ceremony. “Come sit. I am told we have things to discuss.”

  “Oh, yes, we do, my beautiful queen,” the soph said, stepping away from the arms of her sons and approaching the throne, one hand lifting the long hem of her gown. She was very spry, actually; no doubt she retained her sons in the temple for their own good, and not hers; the Oikoumen was not the easiest place to employment these days.

  Patrlkia sat on the pillow-covered chair, a body length below the queen’s throne, and lifted her face to Kleopatra, eyes bright with excitement.

  “I am also told you have brought some of your wonderful instruments, to show them to me, and reveal their purposes,” Kleopatra said.

  “If I may ... ?”

  “By all means.”

  Patrikia gestured and two Hypateion students carried up a wide, shallow wooden case. Kleopatra recognized the wood: pigeon’s-eye maple from Nea Karkhedon across the broad Atlantic. She wondered how their revolution was coming along; little news leaked out from the blockaded coastal territories.

  The priestess ordered the case to be set down on a wide round table of beaten brass chased with silver. ”Perhaps your Imperial Hypslots knows my story ... ?”

  Kleopatra nodded and smiled. ”That you dropped from the sky, chased by a furious star, and that you were not born on this Gaia.”

  “And that I brought with me ... ?” Patrikia prompted, for all the world like one of Kleopatra’s tutors. The queen didn’t mind; she enjoyed tutoring and learning. Indeed, she had spent most of her life in classrooms, learning the qualities and extent of her realm, and the languages, as well.

  “You brought marvelous instruments, for which there are no exact equivalents in our world. Yes, yes, these stories are well known.”

  “Then I now tell you things known only to myself,” Patrikia said.

  She glanced around the court and then returned her extraordinary gaze to the young queen. Kleopatra understood and nodded.

  “This will be a private audience. We will adjourn and meet in my chambers.”

  The court was quickly cleared, and Kleopatra unceremoniously dropped her heavy robes and gathered a light cloak of byssos around her shoulders. With only two guards and the soph’s sons accompanying them, they strolled to the queen’s chambers. Trays of quail and crystal goblets of wines from Cos awaited them, and the soph ate with the queen, a very rare privilege.

  When they were done, the sons ate, and Kleopalra and Patrikia made themselves comfortable on pillows in a corner.

  Chamberlains drew curtains around them for privacy.

  Then and only then did Patrikia open the lid of the wooden case.

  There, in thick Tyrian purple felt—the felt from Pridden and the dye from Ioudeia—rested a silver-and-glass, palmsized flat object, a second slightly smaller object and something saddle-shaped with protruding handles.

  These objects were almost as famous as the Cache of General Ptolemaios Sotr, especially among scholars and philosophers. Few had ever seen them, not even her mother and fathers.

  Kleopatra regarded them with unabashed curiosity. ”Tell me, please,” she said.

  “With this,” and Patrikia pointed to the smaller flat object, “I can measure the qualities of space and time. Years ago, when I took refuge in the Hypateion, after the death of my husband, the tekhnai there made me new batteries, and these devices function again.”

  “I must commend them,” Kleopatra said. Patrikia smiled and waved her hand as if at trivial matters.

  “The philosophy and tekhnos of your world is not so advanced as mine in some respects, though very nearly. But you have wonderful mathematicians, wonderful astronomers. My work has progressed.”

  “Yes?”

  “And ...” Patrikia lifted the object with handles from the case.

  “This instrument tells me when others are trying to open passages to our world, this Gaia. It senses their workings, and it tells me.”

  “Does it have any other purpose?” Kleopatra asked, aware she was already out of her depth.

  “No. Not now, not here.”

  To her astonishment, the queen realized that the old priestess had tears in her eyes. ”I have never given up my dream,” Patrikia said. “And I have never given up my hope. But I am growing old, my Imperial Hypslots, and my senses are not so keen ... “She lifted herself up in her seat and resettled, with a deep sigh. ”Still, I am certain now. I have been given the proper signs by this device.”

  “Signs of what?”

  “I do not know why, or where, my queen, but a passageway has been opened on our world. This device feels its presence, and so do I. Somewhere on Gaia, my queen. Before I die, I wish to find this passage, and see if perhaps there is some slight chance I might fulfill my dream.“

  “A passage? What do you mean?”

  “A gate to the place from which I came. They have reopened my gate, perhaps. On-someone has created an entirely new road to the stars.”

  Kleopatra was suddenly troubled. The instincts of a hundred and twenty generations of the Makedonian Dynastic Succession were not idle in her blood. ”Are those in your world people of peace and goodwill?” she asked.

  The priestess’s eyes became momenta
rily distant and cloudy. ”I do not know. Probably they are. But I ask the queen to locate this passage, this gate, with all the means at her disposal ...”

  Kleopatra frowned and bent forward to see the priestess’s face from a better perspective. Then she took one of the soph’s withered hands in hers.

  “Would our lands benefit from this passage, this gate?”

  “Almost certainly,” Patrikia said. ”I am a very minor example of the wonders that could lie beyond such an opening.”

  Kleopatra frowned and pondered this for a moment. The Oikoumen was beset with many problems, some of them, her counselors assured her, insurmountable, the problems of an elderly civilization on the wane.

  She did not believe this—not entirely—but the thought frightened her.

  Even in an age of airplanes and radio, there had to be other things, other marvels, which would rescue them from their plight.

  “This is a shortcut to distant territories, places where we might extend our trade, and learn new things?”

  Patrikia smiled. ”Your understanding is quick, my queen.”

  “Then we will search. I will decree that all our allied states and empires will search as well.”

  “It may be hidden, very small,” the priestess warned. “Perhaps only a test gate, as wide across as a man’s arm is long.”

  “Our searchers will be thorough,” Kleopatra said. ”With your guidance, they will find this gate.”

  Patrikia squinted at her with almost insolent suspicion. ”I have long been regarded as a crazy old woman, despite these marvels,” she said, resting her hand on the case. ”Do you believe me?”

  “Yes, upon my heritage as a Queen of Alexandros’s Egypt and the Makedonian Dynasty,” Kleopatra said. She wanted to believe the priestess. Life in the court had been very dull the past few years.

  And the queen did indeed exercise some powers, chiefly in matters involving the political spirit and arums of the state. She could fit this quest into those territories nicely.