Transcendent

by Stephen Baxter

  “A Redemption,” Alia said.

  “Yes. The Wignerians’ was a vision of entelechy that has perhaps influenced the thinking of the Transcendence.” She looked up at the cathedral’s skeleton, squinting in the light. “But everything passes, Alia. Once this was the capital of a government which ruled the Galaxy. Eventually nothing remained of the Coalition but the religion it had tried to ban, and in the end nothing remained of that but this one idea, a dream of entelechy. That and a few ruins.”

  This was an appropriate place for the undying to gather, Leropa said. In time the cathedral had been looted, its walls crumbled—but not this central framework which, made of something called exotic matter, defied entropy itself. “The undying have contempt for mere stone, which in time rots in your hand. This deserves respect.”

  Alia, faintly repelled, said nothing.

  Then, in the shadows of the broken domes, they came on the undying.

  There were few of them to be seen. They moved slowly, cautiously, each rounded figure surrounded by a cloud of servitor machines. But each walked alone. They had empty faces, blank expressions. They didn’t even speak, though some of them seemed to be mumbling to themselves. Just as she had glimpsed on that other Transcendent world in the Galaxy Core, the undying were weighed down by the huge burden of the past, Alia saw, they were each locked into a separate world.

  It struck Alia how Leropa was different. Of all this shuffling crowd of ancients, it was only she who seemed even aware of Alia’s presence.

  “What are you thinking, Alia?”

  “All I see is what’s missing. There is nothing here. No art. No music—”

  Leropa grimaced. “Can you imagine a single piece of art that wouldn’t appal you after a hundred viewings, a piece of music or verse of poetry that, after a thousand years of listening, wouldn’t sicken you with boredom? The very abstract endures longest, I suppose. Cold, voiceless music; pale inhuman art. But in time everything wears away, Alia. Everything visible turns to dust—and so you turn to what remains, the invisible.”

  “What’s inside you.”

  “Yes. The present is just a surface of sensation surrounding a great bubble of memory. You forget how to see, to hear; you forget how to talk to people. You forget other people even exist. You just sink inward into yourself, thinking about the past. Living on and on, without end.”

  “And yet you do live on.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  These ancient figures, and the wisdom they had accreted, were the treasures of mankind, in a sense, and the foundation of the Transcendence, and so they were cherished. But not envied.

  Leropa said, “I understand this repels you. I have seen such a reaction many times before—an instinctive loathing, the rejection all young feel for all old. It is the natural order of things. But you will come round. The alternative to living on and on is, after all, death. And we do have some value, you know.”

  Leropa reached out and, without warning, touched Alia’s forehead. Her touch was cold.

  And suddenly Alia was standing on top of a mountain, drenched in cold air that dragged at her lungs. She stumbled and wrapped her arms around her body.

  Leropa watched her dispassionately. “You’ll be fine,” she said.

  Alia’s systems, suffused by Mist, adjusted to the shock. The feeling of cold, of vertigo, went away. She stood straight, composing herself.

  She was on a plateau no more than a hundred paces across, smoothly cut from the summit of this steep-sided mountain. Walls of granite fell away to valleys far below, and the ground was folded into more mountains on all sides. The rock was slippery underfoot; there might be no ice left at Earth’s poles, but there was ice up here.

  An immense barrel of some cold blue metal pointed up out of the rock of this summit, straight up at the sky. It was monumental, many times her own height. It was obviously a weapon.

  “Where am I?”

  “Does it matter?” Leropa’s thin lips pulled back into a smile. “Ah, but you have Witnessed the career of Michael Poole, haven’t you? In his day these mountains were known as the Pyrenees.”

  “Did we Skim here?”

  “Everybody Skims everywhere, on Earth. The people continue to burn up the planet’s energy store as if it were inexhaustible. You must have seen the floating buildings, the way the whole planet glows from space. Earth has always stayed strong, you know. Even when the Coalition fell it was the capital of the strongest of the successor states. And through all the wars and vicissitudes since, it stayed safe, unharmed. We ensured it did.”

  “We?” But Alia knew who she meant. The undying.

  Leropa said, “And by staying strong, its people naturally became rich—even if the planet was bled of its own substance in the process. Those who have inherited the Earth live exotic lives, Alia. More exotic, more fantastic, more rich than a ship-born waif like you can imagine.”

  Alia resented that. “Maybe. But if they have such rich lives how come they needed to come look at me?”

  Leropa laughed, a dry, eerie sound, quite without humanity. “Perhaps you’re right. They caper on the wealth of ages. But they are bored; they are too ignorant not to be. And they are spoiled rotten.”

  Alia looked up at the barrel of the weapon. “And what is this?”

  “A weapon of war,” Leropa said. “In fact an ancient starbreaker cannon. It is at least three hundred thousand years old, but fully functional. It will probably last as long again.”

  “What’s it doing here? Defense?”

  “In a sense. Its sentience is programed to seek out and destroy any impactors—asteroids, comets—that might threaten the planet.”

  Alia frowned. “Is that likely? This system’s asteroid belts are depleted.”

  “True. An atmosphere-penetrating impact sufficient to cause significant damage is likely only once every million years: in Poole’s time it would have been once a century. And there are more defense perimeters in space.” Leropa glanced up at the weapon. “But this guardian is here even so. Of course the worst case would be a strike that took out this defender, and a second strike that would, undefended, do even more harm.”

  “Surely that sort of multiple accident is almost vanishingly unlikely.”

  “But a real risk nonetheless,” Leropa said. “And so I like to check this installation over, from time to time. This is why I showed you this installation; this is the protection we undying offer to the people of Earth. You understand, don’t you?”

  “I think so . . .”

  It was an elementary insight for a student of the Implication of Indefinite Longevity. The biggest difference in the perception of an undying was time itself. If you were an undying, you could expect to live so long that risks statistically negligible on the timescale of a normal human lifetime became significant. So a once-a-megayear risk of an asteroid strike in this cleaned-out, heavily defended system became worth thinking about, planning for.

  If the species were to survive into the very far future, of course, such thinking was necessary. Mankind needed the undying, or at least their instincts for very long timescales. But it was a deadening, fearful perspective.

  “And you feed all this caution into the Transcendence,” Alia said cautiously.

  “The undying founded the Transcendence. The undying have always shaped it. How could it be otherwise?”

  “But you old ones bring other baggage, don’t you?”

  Leropa smiled. “Baggage? Ah, you mean regret—the driver behind the Redemption. At last we are getting to the point. You have doubts about the Redemption, don’t you, child? You think it is perhaps unhealthy. Obsessive. And you suspect there is more to it than mere Witnessing, don’t you?”

  Alia felt weak before the force of personality of this ancient creature. But she gathered her courage. “I think there must be. Because Witnessing isn’t enough for atonement.”

  Leropa nodded approvingly. “Your intuition is sound. Witnessing is in fact only the First Level of Redemption, as defi
ned by the Colleges. And, no, it isn’t thought to be sufficient. How could it be? Witnessing is for children.”

  “What is the Second Level?”

  “It is called the Hypostatic Union,” Leropa said. “A union of substances, of essences. Do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “Then learn.” She reached out and once more, with a fingertip that was colder than ice, touched Alia’s forehead.

  Alia fell into a bloody dark.

  Chapter 38

  In the morning we gathered outside the hotel’s main entrance, ready to be taken to Makaay’s demonstration. The weather was cold but clear, the sky a pale blue. Tom was here with Sonia, and Shelley and her people, Makaay, and a number of EI workers, most of whom I hadn’t met before. Vander Guthrie was here. His blue hair, protruding out from under his fur cap, looked frankly ridiculous.

  We huddled together, wrapped up in heavy fake-fur coats and Russian-style hats provided for us by EI. “We all look like bears,” Shelley joked, although there had been no bears in this area, polar or otherwise, for decades.

  Awkwardly Tom and I embraced, father and son reunited in this industrial wasteland. Tom didn’t have much to say to me. I was still in the doghouse for daring to speak to Aunt Rosa, and I refrained from telling him about my nocturnal pursuit of his mother’s ghost. Business as usual. I got a kiss on the cheek from Sonia, however.

  A pod bus came to collect us. At the coast we all piled out into a chill wind that swept in off the sea and cut right through our clothing. We looked around.

  The core of our stabilization plant had been built into the hulk of an offshore oil rig. We could see the rig from here, a blocky monochrome shape that loomed maybe a couple of kilometers from the shore. On a scrap of low, badly eroded cliff, a marquee had been set up, a brightly lit dome of some transparent fabric. The marquee had a good view of the offshore rig. Here we would witness the ceremonial start-up of the facility. And then, assuming the whole thing didn’t blow itself sky high, we would be flown out by chopper in small groups for a hands-on inspection. It was all good showmanship.

  We pushed into the marquee through a kind of airlock, past the scrutiny of massive EI security guards. We dumped our coats; I was grateful to get into the warmth. A hovering bot offered me alcohol or hot drinks. I accepted a nip of Scotch, and a big mug of steaming latte. I wandered away from the rest, taking in the scene.

  Maybe fifty people milled in that marquee, most of them EI employees or colleagues of Shelley’s. The accountants and other administrative types wore crumpled suits, but the engineers tended to be more casual, in jackets and jeans. The place was brightly lit and surveillance-rich, with football-size drones that floated in the air, and a finer mist of micro-drones, just a glittering dust that you only noticed if you focused closely.

  “An impressive setup. And all for my benefit.” The liquid female voice was very familiar.

  I turned to see Edith Barnette standing at my side, with Ruud Makaay at her elbow, beaming proudly. Barnette wore a mid-length black dress; her legs were thin and pale, her feet clad in heavy-looking shoes. She was surprisingly tall, and her face was big-boned, her jaws heavy. Her skin, deeply wrinkled, was tanned pale gold, and her hair, sprayed into a dense helmet, was an uncompromising white. But she stood straight, her eyes were bright and alert, and when she spoke her voice was as mellow as it had always been.

  At the side of today’s sole VIP, Makaay was in his element. His blond hair shone sleek in the bright lights. “Not entirely for your benefit, Madame Vice President.” He outlined his plans, and his intention that today should serve as a rehearsal before we encounter more unforgiving audiences.

  Barnette said, “Then I will be sure to give you plenty of feedback.”

  “I’ll welcome it. Forgive me, I’m due on stage.” He ducked out, bowing.

  “So, Mr. Poole,” Barnette said to me. “All this was your idea, the stabilization project?”

  “I guess so. It was me who asked the right questions. But it was in the air, the community I work with. Sooner or later somebody would have seen the need to—”

  “Oh, don’t wiffle, man, I’ve no time for that.” She fixed me with a pointed finger, slightly crooked. “Your brainchild. Yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “It seems we will all owe you a debt of gratitude.”

  I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Like Barnette the world tended to have a simple view of such projects; the media always looked for the chief engineer, the unsung double dome behind it all. But it wasn’t a role I was going to be comfortable playing, even if the project went well.

  “I guess so,” I said. “If it works.”

  “If?”

  “We can’t be sure. We think we’ve modeled all the consequences.”

  “You consulted Gea, didn’t you?”

  “Gea has supported us from the start. . . . You know her?”

  “Never met it. Her? But I was responsible for major tranches of her development funding.”

  I nodded, impressed. “But even with Gea on board, all we have are theoretical models. We can’t be sure what will happen.”

  Barnette surprised me with her understanding. “I’m told some scientists believe the biosphere may be algorithmically incompressible. Is that the right phrase?—it literally can’t be modeled, for its intrinsic complexity is simply too great. The biosphere is its own unfolding story.”

  I was impressed. “I’ve seen that, too.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think it makes a difference. The biosphere is bigger than we can manage confidently right now, so it doesn’t matter how big it is, ultimately.”

  She smiled. “Spoken like an engineer. I always liked engineers, you know, though I was a philosophy major. You are pragmatists! Though I suspect many of you couldn’t even spell the word. Despite the unfathomable complexity of the world, we must pragmatically tinker with it because of this hydrate destabilization business, mustn’t we?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right. About everything.”

  She was interrupted by a soft chiming. Ruud Makaay had mounted a low stage and in his customary fashion was gently tapping a glass with a pen.

  “Madam Vice President, everyone, thank you for joining us here on this exciting day. Of course most of you are paid to be here, and mostly by me, but thanks for showing even so . . .” Expert stuff, laughter easily evoked. “We’re here to witness the first full-scale end-to-end integrated trial of the hydrate stabilization system prototype,” he said, to a few whoops from his engineers. “But I think we should begin with some context.”

  Makaay snapped his fingers, and a screen appeared in the air behind him. To my surprise it showed an image of what looked like an oasis in the desert, a splash of green against pale yellow, with a clear blue pool at its center. “The polar hydrate deposits, a massive store of greenhouse gases, are unstable. But they are not the Earth’s only instability. . . .”

  The images he showed us were of the Sahara Desert. As everybody in the marquee knew, one twist to the general global pattern of climate change was that the Sahara was greening. It had happened before, Makaay said. Five thousand years before an extended drought had caused an environment of woodland and marshes full of crocodiles to flip over to a parched plain with only a few scattered oases, with crocodile bones left under the drifting sands for paleobiologists to puzzle over. The Sahara appeared to be on a permanent knife edge, flipping between dry desert and wet woodland. It was thought such astounding transformations could take just twenty years—maybe less. This fundamental instability was why it had been possible for EI to hurry the process in selected parts of the desert, with its immense artificial lakes back-filled with Mediterranean water.

  This was one example, Makaay said, of a common feature of Earth’s climatic evolution. If you forced it, for instance by injecting greenhouse gases in the air, it tended not to respond smoothly, like rubber
deforming under pressure. Instead it tended to snap, like the Sahara, switching abruptly from one stable state to another. The world was full of systems, which if pushed too far, might undergo “abrupt and irreversible change,” as Makaay put it: he listed the possible failure of the Gulf Stream, and the creation of a permanent El Niño storm that might dry out rainforests and create deserts across the tropics.

  “We know we have to stabilize the hydrate deposits,” Makaay said. “But this will not be the last time we will have to intervene on a massive, indeed global scale, if we are to ensure that the Earth’s systems do not transition into a condition that makes the planet uninhabitable for us. We must learn to manage the Earth, our home, even while we cherish it. . . .”

  Edith Barnette leaned down to whisper to me, “Nice presentation. I enjoyed the focus on the green Sahara—nothing wrong with an unexpectedly positive image. But now he sounds like an EI corporate report. I suggest in the future he cuts to the chase.”

  Now Makaay showed us blow-up images of our new baby, a glistening, complacent-looking mole. The moles had been trialled individually, but today was the first integrated trial of the system as a whole. A dozen moles would be dropped down defunct oil boreholes to begin the construction of an interconnected network, spreading out through hydrate strata, chattering to each other through sonar and other comms channels, and closing the complex loops around which the liquid nitrogen would flow.

  For now the condensation plant and liquefaction gear would be based on the central oil platform. But that was only a stopgap design for this proof-of-concept pilot; in the future, working out “in the wild,” as Makaay put it, submersibles would install liquefaction and condensation gear on the seabed, to link up with the moles’ tunnels beneath. And so the network would grow, spreading across the ocean floor, until the pole was encircled.

  Now we were shown live images of the old oil rig a couple of kilometers offshore where our nitrogen liquefaction plant had been installed. Big liquid-nitrogen tanks glistened in the sun, frost sparkling on their surfaces. A countdown clock appeared in the corner of our image and started to tick away the seconds before the insertion of the first moles. A hush fell over the room, as the show took on the feel of a space launch, a fond memory of my childhood. Makaay was never one to miss a trick, I thought respectfully.