by Greg Bear
—Testimony of Master Gate Opener Ry Ornis, Secret Hearings Conducted by the Infinite Hexamon Nexus, “On the Advisability of Opening Gates into Chaos and Order”
The ghost of his last lover found Olmy Ap Sennen in the oldest columbarium of Alexandria, within the second chamber of the Thistledown.
Olmy stood in the middle of the hall, surrounded by stacked tiers of hundreds of small golden spheres. The spheres were urns, most of them containing only a sample of ashes. They rose to the glassed-in ceiling, held within columns of gentle yellow suspension fields. He reached out to touch a blank silver plate at the base of one column. The names of the dead appeared as if suddenly engraved, one after another.
He removed his hand when the names reached Ilmo, Paul Yan. This is where the soldiers from his childhood neighborhood were honored; in this column, five names, all familiar to him from days in school, all killed in a single skirmish with the Jarts near 3 ex 9, three billion kilometers down the Way. All had been obliterated without trace. These urns were empty.
He did not know the details. He did not need to. These dead had served Thistledown as faithfully as Olmy, but they would never return.
Olmy had spent seventy-three years stranded on the planet Lamarckia, in the service of the Hexamon, cut off from the Thistledown and the Way that stretched beyond the asteroid’s seventh chamber. On Lamarckia, he had raised children, loved and buried wives… lived a long and memorable life in primitive conditions on an extraordinary world. His rescue and return to the Way, converted within days from an old and dying man to a fresh-bodied youth, had been a shock worse than the return of any real and ancient ghost.
Axis City, slung on the singularity that occupied the geodesic center of the Way, had been completed during those tumultuous years before Olmy’s rescue and resurrection. It had moved four hundred thousand kilometers “north”, down the Way, far from the seventh chamber cap. Within the Geshel precincts of Axis City, the mental patterns of many who died were now transferred to City Memory, a technological afterlife not very different from the ancient dream of heaven. Using similar technology, temporary partial personalities could be created to help an individual multi-task. These were sometimes called ghosts. Olmy had heard of partials, sent to do the bidding of their originals, with most of their mental faculties duplicated, but limited power to make decisions. He had never actually met one, however.
The ghost appeared just to his right and announced its nature by flickering slightly, growing translucent, then briefly turning into a negative. This display lasted only a few seconds. After, the simulacrum seemed perfectly solid and real. Olmy jumped, disoriented, then surveyed the ghost’s features. He shook his head and smiled wryly.
“It will give my original joy to find you well,” the partial said. “You seem lost, Ser Olmy.”
Olmy did not quite know what form of speech to use with the partial. Should he address it with respect due to the original, a corprep and a woman of influence… The last woman he had tried to be in love with… Or as he might address a servant?
“I come here often. Old acquaintances.”
The image looked concerned. “Poor Olmy. Still don’t belong anywhere?”
Olmy ignored this. He looked for the ghost’s source. It was projected from a small fist-sized flier hovering several meters away.
“I’m here on behalf of my original, corporeal representative Neya Taur Rinn. You realize… I am not her?”
“I’m not ignorant,” Olmy said sharply, finding himself once more at a disadvantage with this woman.
The ghost fixed her gaze on him. The image, of course, was not actually doing the seeing. “The presiding minister of the Way, Yanosh Ap Kesler, instructed me to find you. My original was reluctant. I hope you understand.”
Olmy folded his hands behind his back as the partial picted a series of ID symbols: Office of the Presiding Minister, Hexamon Nexus Office of Way Defense, Office of Way Maintenance. Quite a stack of bureaucracies, Olmy thought, Way Maintenance currently being perhaps the most powerful and arrogant of them all.
“What does Yanosh want with me?” he asked bluntly.
The ghost lifted her hands and pointed her index finger into her palm, tapping with each point. “You supported him in his bid to become presiding minister of the Seventh Chamber and the Way. You’ve become a symbol for the advance of Geshel interests.”
“Against my will,” Olmy said. Yanosh, a fervent progressive and Geshel, had sent Olmy to Lamarckia—and had also brought him back and arranged for his new body. Olmy for his own part had never known quite which camp he belonged to: conservative Naderites, grimly opposed to the extraordinary advances of the last century; or the enthusiastically progressive Geshels.
Neya Taur Rinn’s people were Geshels of an ancient radical faction, among the first to move into Axis City. The partial continued. “Ser Kesler has won re-election as presiding minister of the Way and now also serves as mayor of three precincts in Axis City.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Of course. The presiding minister extends his greetings and hopes you are agreeable.”
“I am very agreeable,” Olmy said mildly. “I stay out of politics and disagree with nobody. I can’t pay back Yanosh for all he has done—but then, I have rendered him due service as well.” He did not like being baited—and could not understand why Yanosh would send Neya to fetch him. The presiding minister knew enough about Olmy’s private life—probably too much. “Yanosh knows I’ve put myself on permanent leave.” Olmy could not restrain himself. “Pardon me for boldness, but I’m curious. How do you feel? Do you actually think you are Neya Taur Rinn?”
The partial smiled. “I am a high-level partial given subordinate authority by my original,” it said. She said… Olmy decided he would not cut such fine distinctions.
“Yes, but what does it feel like?” he asked.
“At least you’re still alive enough to be curious,” the partial said.
“Your original regarded my curiosity as a kind of perversity,” Olmy said.
“A morbid curiosity,” the partial returned, clearly uncomfortable. “I couldn’t stand maintaining a relationship with a man who wanted to be dead.”
“You rode my fame until I bored you,” Olmy rejoined, then regretted the words. He used old training to damp his sharper emotions.
“To answer your question, I feel everything my original would feel. And my original would hate to see you here. What do you feel like, Ser Olmy?” The ghost’s arm swung out to take in the urns, the columbarium. “Coming here, walking among the dead, that’s pretty melodramatic.”
That a ghost could remember their time together, could carry tales of this meeting to her original, to a woman he had admired with all that he had left of his heart, both irritated and intrigued him. “You were attracted to me because of my history.”
“I was attracted to you because of your strength,” she said. “It hurt me that you were so intent on living in your memories.”
“I clung to you.”
“And to nobody else…
“I don’t come here often,” Olmy said. He shook his hands out by his side and stepped back. “All my finest memories are on a world I can never go back to. Real loves… real life. Not like Thistledown now.” He squinted at the image. The image’s focus was precise; still, there was something false about it, a glossiness, a prim neatness unlike Neya. “You didn’t help.”
The partial’s expression softened. “I don’t take the blame entirely, but your distress doesn’t please me. My original.”
“I didn’t say I was in distress. I feel a curious peace in fact. Why did Yanosh send you? Why did you agree to come?”
The ghost reached out to him. Her hand passed through his arm. She apologized for this breach of etiquette. “For your sake, to get you involved, and for the sake of my original, please, at least speak to our staff. The presiding minister needs you to join an expedition.” She seemed to consider for a moment, then screw up her c
ourage. “There’s trouble at the Redoubt.”
Olmy felt a sting of shock at the mention of that name. The conversation had suddenly become more than a little risky. He shook his head vigorously. “I do not acknowledge even knowing of such a place,” he said.
“You know more than I do,” the partial said. “I’ve been assured that it’s real. Way Defense tells the Office of Way Maintenance that it now threatens us all.”
“I’m not comfortable holding this conversation in a public place,” Olmy protested.
This seemed to embolden the partial, and she projected her image closer. “This area is quiet and clean. No one listens.”
Olmy stared up at the high glass ceiling.
“We are not being observed,” the partial insisted. “The Nexus and Way Defense are concerned that the Jarts are closing in on that sector of the Way. I am told that if they occupy it, gain control of the Redoubt, Thistledown might as well be ground to dust and the Way set on fire like a piece of string. That scares my original. It scares me as I am now. Does it bother you in the least, Olmy?”
Olmy looked along the rows of urns … Centuries of Thistledown history, lost memory, now turned to pinches of ash, or less.
“Yanosh says he’s positive you can help,” the partial said with a strong lilt of emotion. “It’s a way to rejoin the living and make a new place for yourself.”
“Why should that matter to you? To your original?” Olmy asked.
“Because my original still regards you as a hero. I still hope to emulate your service to the Hexamon.”
Olmy smiled wryly. “Better to find a living model,” he said. “I don’t belong out there. I’m rusted over.”
“That is not true,” the partial said. “You have been given a new body. You are youthful and strong, and very experienced…” She seemed about to say more, but hesitated, rippled again, and faded abruptly. Her voice faded as well, and he heard only “Yanosh says he’s never lost faith in you—"
The floor of the columbarium trembled. The solidity of Thistledown seemed to be threatened; a quake through the asteroid material, an impact from outside… or something occurring within the Way. Olmy reached out to brace himself against a pillar. The golden spheres vibrated in their suspensions, jangling like hundreds of small bells.
From far away, sirens began to wail.
The partial reappeared. “I have lost contact with my original,” it said, its features blandly stiff. “Something has broken my link with City Memory.”
Olmy watched Neya’s image with fascination as yet untouched by any visceral response.
“I do not know when or if there will be a recovery,” she said. “There’s a failure on Axis City.” Suddenly the image appeared puzzled, then stricken. She held out her phantom arms. “My original…” As if she were made of solid flesh, her face crinkled with fear. “She’s died. I’ve died. Oh my God, Olmy!”
Olmy tried to understand what this might mean, under the radical new rules of life and death for Geshels such as Neya. “What’s happened? What can we do?”
The image flickered wildly. “My body is gone. There’s been a complete system failure. I don’t have any legal existence.”
“What about the whole-life records? Connect with them.” Olmy walked around the unsteady image, as if he might capture it, stop it from fading.
“I kept putting it off… So stupid! I haven’t put myself in City Memory yet.”
He tried to touch her and of course could not. He could not believe what she was saying, yet the sirens still wailed, and another small shudder rang through the asteroid.
“I have no place to go. Olmy, please! Don’t let me just stop!” The ghost of Neya Taur Rinn drew herself up, tried to compose herself. “I have only a few seconds before…”
Olmy felt a sudden and intense attraction to the shimmering image. He wanted to know what actual death, final death, could possibly feel like. He reached out again, as if to embrace her.
She shook her head. The flickering increased. “It feels so strange—losing—"
Before she could finish, the image vanished completely. Olmy’s arms hung around silent and empty air.
The sirens continued to wail, audible throughout Alexandria. He slowly dropped his arms, all too aware of being alone. The projector flew in a small circle, emitting small wheeping sounds. Without instructions from its source, it could not decide what to do.
For a moment, he shivered and his neck hair pricked—a sense of almost religious awe he had not experienced since his time on Lamarckia.
Olmy had started walking toward the end of the hall before he consciously knew what to do. He turned right to exit through the large steel doors and looked up through the thin clouds enwrapping the second chamber, through the glow of the flux tube to the axis borehole on the southern cap. His eyes were warm and wet. He wiped them with the back of his hand and his breath hitched.
Emergency beacons had switched on around the flux tube, forming a bright ring two thirds of the way up the cap.
His shivering continued, and it angered him. He had died once already, yet this new body was afraid of dying, and its wash of emotions had taken charge of his senses.
Deeper still and even more disturbing was a scrap of the old loyalty… To his people, to the vessel that bore them between the stars, that served as the open chalice of the infinite Way. A loyalty to the woman who had found him too painful to be with. “Neya!" he moaned. Perhaps she had been wrong. A partial might not have access to all information; perhaps things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
But he knew that they were. He had never felt Thistledown shake so.
Olmy hurried to the rail terminal three city squares away, accompanied by throngs of curious and alarmed citizens. Barricades had been set across the entrances to the northern cap elevators; all inter-chamber travel was temporarily restricted. No news was available.
Olmy showed the ID marks on his wrist to a cap guard, who scanned them quickly and transmitted them to her commanders. She let him pass, and he entered the elevator and rode swiftly to the borehole.
Within the workrooms surrounding the borehole waited an arrowhead-shaped official transport, as the presiding minister’s office had requested. None of the soldiers or guards he questioned knew what had happened. There were still no official pronouncements on any of the citizen nets. Olmy rode the transport, accompanied by five other officials, through the vacuum above the atmospheres of the next four chambers, threading the boreholes of each of the massive concave walls that separated them. None of the chambers showed any sign of damage.
In the southern cap borehole of the sixth chamber, Olmy transferred from the transport to a tuberider, designed to run along the singularity that formed the core of the Way. On this most unusual railway, he sped at many thousands of miles per hour toward the Axis City at 4 ex 5—four hundred thousand kilometers north of Thistledown.
A few minutes from Axis City, the tuberider slowed and the forward viewing port darkened. There was heavy radiation in the vicinity, the pilot reported. Something had come down the Way at relativistic velocity and struck the northern precincts of Axis City.
Olmy had little trouble guessing the source.
2
A day passed before Olmy could see the presiding minister. Emergency repairs on Axis City had rendered only one precinct, Central City, habitable; the rest, including Axis Prime and Axis Nader, were being evacuated. Axis Prime had taken the brunt of the impact. Tens of thousands had lost their lives, both Geshels and Naderites. Naderites by and large did not participate in the practice of storing their body patterns and recent memories as insurance against such a calamity.
Some Geshels would receive their second incarnation—many thousands more would not. City Memory itself had been damaged. Even had Neya taken the time to make her whole-life record, store her patterns, she might still have died.
The last functioning precinct, Central City, now contained the combined offices of Presiding Minister of the Way a
nd the Axis City government, and it was here that Yanosh met with Olmy.
“Her name was Deirdre Enoch,” the presiding minister said, floating over the transparent external wall of the new office. His body was wrapped below the chest in a shining blue medical support suit; the impact had broken both of his legs and caused severe internal injuries. For the time being, the presiding minister was a functioning cyborg, until new organs could be grown and placed. “She opened a gate illegally at three ex nine, fifty years ago. Just beyond the point where we last repulsed the Jarts. She was helped by a master gate opener who deliberately disobeyed Nexus and guild orders. We learned about the breach six months after she had smuggled eighty of her colleagues—or maybe a hundred and twenty, we aren’t sure how many—into a small research center—and just days after the gate was opened. There was nothing we could do to stop it.”
Olmy gripped a rail that ran around the perimeter of the office, watching Kesler without expression. The irony was too obvious. “I’ve only heard rumors. Way Maintenance—”
Kesler was hit by a wave of pain, quickly damped by the suit. He continued, his face drawn. “Damn Way Maintenance. Damn the in-fighting and politics.” He forced a smile. “Last time it was a Naderite renegade on Lamarckia.”
Olmy nodded.
“This time—Geshel. Even worse—a member of the Openers Guild. I never imagined running this damned starship would ever be so complicated. Makes me almost understand why you long for Lamarckia.”
“It wasn’t any easier there,” Olmy said.
“Yes—but there were fewer people.” Yanosh rotated his support suit and crossed the chamber. “We don’t know precisely what happened. Something disturbed the immediate geometry around the gate. The conflicts between Way physics and the universe Enoch accessed were too great. The gate became a lesion, impossible to close. By that time, most of Enoch’s scientists had retreated to the main station, a protective pyramid—what she called the Redoubt.”