"It is the least I can do," Chuan said.
He spoke almost in an undertone, somewhat hoarsely. In a plain brown robe, stoop-shouldered, the round visage showing more bones than before and dark circles below the eyes, he stood dwarfed by the armored form that had summoned him.
"Let's go sit in the living room," Guthrie suggested.
He led the way, though Chuan had been here far oftener over many years. The room was large, with broad viewports toward the farmland and the wilderness beyond. Well-worn furniture spread across a deep-blue thermal carpet. A cat dozed on one chair. It opened yellow eyes when the two came in, but stayed relaxed, having always been loved. Pictures and animations, now static, were on the walls: classic reproductions, scenic views, portraits. Kinna's hung above a set of shelves. Upon them her family had set objects she cared about: some heirloom glassware, a couple of antique codex books, a childhood doll, glittery rocks she had collected on her expeditions, oddment souvenirs from various towns, a model of her pet robot. The air was cool, scented with pine. She liked that fragrance.
This was the custom among Terran Martians, to maintain such a shrine for a Martian year after a death. People were closer to their blood kin than they generally were on Earth or Luna; and grief of the Terran kind was unknown to Lunarians. You might find this care for the departed among folk such as the Lahui Kuikawa, Guthrie had thought—yes, maybe among the Keiki Moana too— but otherwise only here and at the stars.
Chuan glanced about. "A curiously appropriate site for our meeting," he said in his near-whisper.
"I felt that way myself," Guthrie answered. "Of course, there was also the practical side. To judge from everything I've heard, we'll be reasonably sure of no bugs, no traps, no news hounds or anybody else underfoot."
"Yet I was surprised that the Ronays agreed. They are proud and private."
"Well, they were willing to talk with me when they'd been approached."
"Who would not be?"
"After I'd explained to them how—" Guthrie's voice faltered. He must force the next few words, though a download shouldn't have that kind of weakness, should it? "—how much Fertn loved their daughter—they felt better." That's made the whole rigmarole worthwhile, whatever else does or does not come of it, he thought. "Then they were glad to help."
"To what end?"
"That's what we want to explore, no?" Guthrie waved a hand. "Sit down, do. What can I offer you? I've learned the kitchen, these days while I've been a guest."
"Thank you. Some tea would be ... comforting." Chuan lowered himself and huddled.
Guthrie went out, prepared the brew, put cookies on the tray as well, and brought the refreshments back. He set them on a table in front of the man and took the chair across from him.
Chuan lifted the cup. His hands trembled slightly. He sipped. Silence deepened.
Having drained the cup, he set it aside, looked up into the facelessness before him, and said levelly, "I confess to puzzlement. Why do you want to confer with me? Under the circumstances, you could, and I think should, deal directly with the Synesis"—he hesitated, then went resolutely on—"with, I may as well say, the central cybercosm on Earth, or the very Teramind."
"But you see," Guthrie replied, "I don't aim to negotiate or anything like that. I've neither the authority nor the desire to. If I did, I still wouldn't have the wisdom."
"What then do you seek?"
“To talk with somebody who can maybe help me understand what's happened and what it means, so I can explain to my own people. I've gathered you're a decent fellow, my best bet."
The deadened countenance came awake with startle-ment. "I?"
Yes, he, Guthrie thought: the synnoiont, sundered from his machines, more isolated than the human world could know. It took courage to come here thus, courage and— what else? Compassion? No, not that. If ever anyone sat in need of mercy, it was this small man.
"I am as lost and bewildered as all others are." Chuan plainly tried to make the sentence not pathetic, only a statement of fact.
"Yeh?" Be brutally frank, Guthrie thought. Pussyfooting is no kindness. "You knew. You were in the cybercosm, part of it, communing with it like a believer with his god."
"Actually, I did not know until a few years ago. The One does not reveal everything to its avatars either. How could it? How could we bear the knowledge, before we become one with it?"
"But then you were informed and co-opted into the conspiracy."
Chuan stiffened. A hint of anger put more life into his tone. "That is an ugly word, captain. You scarcely have a right to use it, after what you have done. It was a stratagem for a noble purpose and an end too great for you to imagine."
Don't come between a man and his faith, Guthrie reminded himself. "Well, let's not argue rights and wrongs. I'm after the objective truth, and I do think that, given the situation as it's developed, your best course is to come clean about it. What was that purpose?" Sharper: "What did the—all right, the Teramind—what did it hope for? A fantastic illusion of a cosmic machine civilization that never existed—''
The revelation standing forth naked from the database out of the lens: stars, planets, a querning of creation and destruction and rebirth, but at the galactic heart and in the galactic wheel no more sign of sentience than anywhere else, a grandeur altogether blind, although things went on around the great black hole—monstrous forces, convulsions in space-time—which the scientists at Proserpina could not account for or even give a name to.
Chuan sighed. "Oh, it has become obvious, has it not?"
He rallied, sat straight, and looked unblinkingly at the blank mask. "Humans," he said, "organic beings, limited, fallible, reckless, greedy, often hideously cruel—should not run loose in the universe." His voice softened. "Let them instead have guidance through centuries into the peace and transcendence of Oneness."
Unbidden rebellion spoke for Guthrie before he could stop it. "I think the word you want is 'domesticated.' "
"No! Cannot you, at least, understand? You are machine,"
"I remember being a man. Someday I'll be a man again." Guthrie lifted a hand, palm outward, the immemorial sign of truce. "But let's not fight. Why couldn't you let us go on in our wild ways? We're hardly a threat to you."
A metal coolness descended on Chuan. "You are. You will trouble the cosmos."
If Guthrie had been generating the image of a head, he would have nodded. "I see. You mean we'll never fit into your harmony. We'll keep stubbing our toes on outside reality, which doesn't give a damn about intellect either, and veering off on unforeseeable courses. It'll get worse once we learn what's really going on at the core of the galaxy."
Chuan's self-control wavered for a moment. "I don't .know what is. I cannot comprehend. But the great equation, the ultimate summation, is clearly incomplete. I suspect that the new knowledge, the new physics, can lead to—a power to transform the universe." He shuddered.
"And we humans," Guthrie said, steadily because he had guessed something of the kind, "if we're still around then—millions of years from now, maybe, but the Teramind naturally thinks in such terms—and if we take a share in the job, we won't likely do it according to the grand plan. Though long before then, just by existing as we are, we'll have made its universal order, its undisturbed reign of pure mind, impossible." Attack: "So we had to be stopped while the stopping was good. We had to be kept in our place, well-treated, happy, but stupefied, submissive without knowing we were. Pet animals."
Vigor surged up in Chuan. "No! You are absolutely wrong. The cybercosm is intellect. By its own nature, it cannot want to destroy or diminish or limit any other intellect. No, it must try to lead minds toward growth and the strength that comes from inner peace. That was the dream."
He was quiet for a second or two before he continued, diminuendo: "You are correct; humans as they are now, ranging wherever and wreaking whatever they choose, will bring havoc, physieal disasters and spiritual catastrophes. First they should be guided to matur
ity.
"The vision of a sophotectic civilization spanning the galaxy should awe them into thoughtfulness, but it was not meant to demoralize them. Indeed, it doubtless could not. Basically, in the light of experience in the Solar System, logic requires that if any high-technology society flourishes anywhere else, it will have produced sophotects, and they will have evolved.
"The civilizations of organic beings, those are what would truly have spoken to humans. They would inspire, enlighten, and point the way. Far from being numbed as you say, our race would be stimulated as never before, would raise itself to heights inconceivable today."
"And you were brought in, among others, to help construct those imaginary beings," Guthrie deduced.
"Yes," Chuan replied, not lowering his gaze. "It would be as demanding a task as minds ever undertook. Those societies must be not only believable, but rich, diverse, challenging, and at the same time, sane. Environments, biologies, histories, languages, sciences, arts, faiths—a work requiring centuries, and requiring the contributions of humans as well as sophotects. The aim was to present humankind here with something that would more and more engage our finest intelligences, lifetime after lifetime, keeping bodies safely at home while nourishing spirits and bringing them toward fulfillment."
"Your kind of fulfillment," Guthrie said.
"What else?" Chuan retorted. "Do you claim moral superiority for your—your warriors, hunters, butchers, bandits, carousers, criminals, grovelers in superstition, blood sacrificers—your leftover animality?"
"No," Guthrie said. "I'm not arrogant enough to make a judgment like that, either way. I do claim our right to freedom."
He fell silent, searching for words. The cat jumped from its chair, went to a viewport, and stood on its hind legs, gazing forth to where a silkentree tossed in the wind out of the wilderness.
"Seems to me, though," Guthrie said, "we are groping our way forward, however clumsily, and maybe what we'll get to at last is something no grand scheme of any one grand mind could imagine. But I repeat, let's not argue that. It's gone moot, hasn't it?"
I've got a speech to make, he thought. Well, I've got an intelligent and simpatico listener. "Correct me if I'm wrong, which I don't expect I am. This is the truth. Partly some Proserpinans and I worked it out beforehand; partly you've filled in details for me.
"The cybercosm, and the few humans in its confidence, meant to spring the account of the galactic civilization at a later date, two or three generations from now, maybe, when it would be plausible that the lenses had begun picking up traces of organic societies out there. But the spread of discontent and misbehavior among people made things look somewhat more urgent than hitherto. Was that why you yourself were suddenly brought into the project, mis late in your life? In general, the cybercosm had to play by ear. The vulnerability of the Pavonis Mons Station does suggest that eventually somebody would've been maneuvered into going in and uncovering the secret. That'd lend force to the disclosure. As was, it happened much sooner than planned, everything wasn't quite arranged, and so it gave Fenn and me a clue.
"Meanwhile, your c-ships have been scuttling around in the light-years. Their robots couldn't forever keep us colonists from setting up our own gravitational lenses, but they could delay that and be planting technofakery throughout this galactic neighborhood, to convince us also when the time was ripe. Von Neumann-type machines, reproducing at sun after sun, wouldn't take impossibly long about it.
"So we'd want cybercosms ourselves, we colonists, to help us deal with the godlike ones yonder. Especially after we started learning, early on, that the wonderful organic beings were wonderful in large part because of their close association with those sophotects. We humans would gradually decide that this was, after all, our proper fate too, which we should accept with joy—being absorbed. Transfigured, you'd say. And once we were, how could we resent the way we were brought to it?''
He was oversimplifying, Guthrie knew. Probably the Teramind had more imagination than that. Although ultimately it sought to control the cosmos, liberating mind from contingency in order to seek—or to create—the Absolute, that goal shone-in a future more remote than the death of the last star. First, he thought, it might well give matter and energy free play, let them evolve spontaneously, let them realize possibilities unpredictable within chaos and complexity—closely watched, of course, never allowed to run truly wild—
What crystalline equivalents of forests and beasts might arise on barren planets under hellish suns? What riddles might they present to explorers who had never heard of the intellect that ordained and afterward perforce abandoned them? What destinies might be theirs?
"But we," Guthrie finished, "a handful of mutinous, headstrong humans, and me, and purposeless chance, we overthrew the whole careful plan. I suspect reality always will do likewise."
"You have wrecked more than a plan," Chuan said low. ' The news will mean upheaval. Do you accept responsibility for the death and destruction, the suffering and ruin, to come?"
"Will things necessarily be that bad?" Guthrie answered. "Okay, I'd personally have been willing to cooperate in breaking the story more gradually, but the Proserpinans left me no choice. People are being rudely disillusioned about their Synesis and cybercosm, yes. Their Teramind turns out to be capable of lying, conniving, and blundering, same as the rest of us. They won't right away know what to do next, or even what to think. But they were already restless, weren't they? More and more of them weren't satisfied any longer with your ordered, rational, benevolent, fenced-in nursery—maybe because, down underneath, they sensed it was a nursery, training them for what you, not they, had decided was best.
"Well, if their societies are worth saving, they'll adapt, they'll survive. Earth humans may start going back into space in earnest—the Lahui Kuikawa for certain, I'd guess, and later the Martians—but most people will want to keep on in their familiar lives. You, your cybercosm, can help them in that. It's being called into question, which I'd say is mighty healthy, but Terrans at Sol are way past the point where they can throw it out. They could no more do that than a man could rip out his brain."
"Terrans," Chuan mumbled. "What of the Proserpinans?"
Guthrie uttered a laugh. "Oh, their jefes are grabbing for every advantage in reach, but they don't fantasize about revolution or conquest or any such fool thing. It isn't in Lunarian nature. My guess is, the Synesis, being currently embarrassed and preoccupied, will have to renegotiate several issues, mainly involving access to your antimatter fuel, and some concessions as regards Luna. No worse."
"Amply bad," Chuan said bleakly. "If they can buy fuel without restriction, they will overrun the comets and make for the stars."
"What's wrong with that?" Guthrie countered. "I assure you, they'll have no interest in dictating to you on your worlds. Nor will we, out on ours. Supposing it were practical, which it isn't, we wouldn't. I'm bound home to tell folks there the truth, and afterward we'll everybody go our own chosen way."
And there, he thought, was the real defeat of the Teramind.
He felt no triumph. He wished he could find words to lighten the load on Chuan.
The synnoiont raised his head. "You have spoken as though I spoke for the cybercosm," he said. "But I am only a man. I too am only a man."
"You aren't resigning your post, are you?" Guthrie asked with all the gentleness he could fashion.
The head shook. "No, never. I will always believe— I must—"
Chuan gasped. He clutched the arms of his chair.
Then he eased, a smile quivered on his lips, and he said, "But perhaps I can still carry word between our worlds. That is what I am for, you know."
I couldn't be that large, so soon after surrendering, Guthrie thought. Aloud: "Maybe, I don't know, maybe in a million years those worlds will find they were two sides of the same one."
Chuan nodded. "One Dao. I dare hope."
They talked on and on, seeking understanding, finding a kind of love. Guthrie generated a
face for himself. Once he stopped to make a meal for his friend. Night fell, the swift Martian darkness. Dust and interior illumination hid the stars. But they were out there nonetheless, Guthrie thought.
"I have a favor to ask of you," he said at last.
"If I can, it is yours," Chuan replied from the depths of his human weariness.
"Nothing big. You've got the influence and the cybercosm has the technological power, doesn't it? Aboard my ship is a brain, all that's left of a brave man. Once reactivated, it'll soon die. But—leave it in its coma till death, but scan it first and—Could they download what's in it into a neural network like mine?"
"I know what you mean." Chuan's glance went to the picture of Kinna Ronay. "I should think this is feasible. You will take the download back with you, for your Life Mother to create a new, living man?"
"Yes," Guthrie said. "He earned that."
FENN WOKE.
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