Transcendent

by Stephen Baxter

  “Of course we can give you any technical detail you want,” Makaay was saying. “Our analysis of the network in terms of connectivity and robustness has assured us that every functional parameter has been addressed, and all local geological conditions accommodated—and all this put together by our moles, working solo and in cooperation. Those little critters have done a good job.” Behind him a blown-up image showed a mole pushing its whirling snout up out of the ground, and it waggled this way and that, as if seeking our approval. It was a shameless bit of anthropomorphism, but it worked, and won Makaay a smattering of laughter and applause.

  The crowd, evidently enjoying the show, were sympathetic for now—though whether they would be when they went back to their offices, and we started to ask for serious funding for the roll-out, was another matter. But we project types were all tense, agitated, sipping drinks and grinning nervously at each other. Even Tom grasped Sonia’s hand so hard their knuckles were white. John seemed distracted, though. I thought he looked at me as much as at the presentation. Even now, at this crucial moment, the Morag business was obviously on his mind.

  To a little more applause, Makaay yielded the floor. Edith Barnette stepped forward, utterly at ease, as always wearing her years well.

  “I’m not qualified to talk to you about the majestic engineering we’re here to witness today,” she said. “I’m not even qualified to talk about methane hydrate reservoirs, which are causing such concern to those who monitor our climate for us, friendly minds both human and artificial. But I can, I think, grasp the wider implications of what is happening here today. For I understand heroism.” Her voice was soft, but it carried to every corner of that big marquee, and the faces of our guests, important or self-important, intelligent or merely self-obsessed, were locked on her. “A new kind of heroism,” she said. “A heroism that seeks to save, not merely oneself, not just one’s friends or family, not even one’s nation or creed. It is a heroism that seeks to save the planet itself, and all its fragile cargo of living things. It is a heroism that seeks to save the very future. . . .”

  Standing there with the vodka coursing through my blood, her words took me back to the hopeful days when President Amin had woken us all up from our nightmare of oil dependency. Amin’s own story was a mixture of meritocracy and openness. She was the child of Iraqi refugees, and her journey, if not quite log cabin to White House, was pretty much the twenty-first century equivalent. Amin had had a simple vision, comprehensible to all, and by asserting it she managed a national, indeed global transformation.

  Of course the demons fought back. Amin’s assassination had been a great punctuation mark. And then had come 2033, the Happy Anniversary flash-bombing.

  It had been a HANE, as the counter-terrorists called it, a high-altitude nuclear explosion, a bomb not much bigger than the Hiroshima device, lofted a couple of hundred kilometers high aboard a small tourist spaceplane. X-rays cooked all but the most hardened low-Earth-orbit satellites, while gamma rays battered the upper atmosphere, releasing high-energy electrons that disabled any sensitive electronics in line of sight, and charged particles made the Earth’s magnetic field oscillate so that electric surges ruined cables and circuits. And a bloodred aurora had spread across the skies of a hemisphere, a sight you would never forget. The developed world was paralyzed for eight days.

  It was one hell of a strike. But even now, fourteen years later, nobody knew for sure who had delivered it. An anonymous message called the “Happy Anniversary” note was sent to the FBI. It was thought perhaps it referred to the two-thousandth anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion. Perhaps anti-Christians were responsible, then—or they may have been a Christian splinter sect—or perhaps it was just mischief-making by terrorists determined to stir up as much trouble as possible.

  There were plenty of people who had problems with the Stewardship. Abroad, there were many who resented the sudden about-turn of America from the world’s worst polluter to a new conscience of the planet. And at home, many groused at our new engagement with the world: America was “a giant submitting to fleabites,” as one opponent put it. For sure there had been plenty of people who wanted to lash out in inchoate rage, at somebody or something. It could have been anybody.

  But the United States and the world had recovered. The bombing was treated as a wake-up call. The years of national introversion were over, and America began to take a lead in the wider program Amin had always envisaged. Barnette now spoke of how the Stewardship drew on deeper traditions of American environmentalism, dating back to Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, and landmark pieces of environmental-protection legislation like the Endangered Species Act.

  And Barnette, speaking quietly but calmly, seemed to summon the ghost of Amin with every word.

  “I hear much talk of despair, these days. We are in a Bottleneck, a time of maximum danger. Well, perhaps that’s so. But I don’t counsel despair. For all the ages to come will stand in the shadow of what we do today, and their people will look back on our generation, and they will say, they were heroes. And they will envy us . . .”

  I was distracted. I thought I saw Morag again, out of the corner of my eye, sliding through the group of VIPs as silent as a fish in deep water.

  And then everything started to unravel.

  Barnette kept talking. But Gea appeared at my feet, a little robot rolling quietly on the green carpet. “Do not be alarmed. Nobody can see me but the project team. We have a problem on the rig.”

  I hissed, “What kind of problem?”

  She conjured up a VR image. It appeared in a glowing cube at our feet, a box of light like an aquarium. A young man stood on a metal platform. His image, ten centimeters high, was finely detailed; I could see the rivets in the plates beneath his feet, like pinheads. He was holding a cylinder from which wires protruded. The man in the fish tank was nervous; you could see his sweat. He was no more than a kid, I realized, younger even than Tom. We stood around in a circle and peered down at this thing, me, Shelley, John, Tom, Sonia, Vander.

  Others were distracted by our behavior. Jack Joy came sidling up from nowhere and joined our group. He was watching us suspiciously, but I was confident he couldn’t see the fish tank. But Barnette kept talking, in bold, bright colors, and kept most people’s attention focused; perhaps she, too, had heard what was going on, and was doing her part in keeping everything together.

  Tom whispered, “I don’t get it. What’s that he’s holding?”

  “It’s a mole,” I said. “Partially disassembled. It’s lacking its nose cone, the spiral bit.”

  Sonia was glaring down, her eyes sharp. “I don’t know anything about the technology, but the setup’s obvious. I’ve had to deal with it a dozen times. You can see it in his posture, his body language. He’s a suicide bomber.”

  I think we all knew it, on some deep level. But having Sonia say it out loud in her precise soldier’s tones was something else.

  Shelley whispered, “He’s one of our technicians. I suppose we weren’t hard to infiltrate. And you can see how he’s made his bomb. That mole might be lacking its nose, but it still has its Higgs-energy heart.”

  I stared at her. “The Higgs pod?” I had been intimately involved in the design of the pods; they were intrinsically safe anyhow, and were laden with security factors. “I can’t imagine how he’s rigged it.”

  “Then he’s more imaginative than you, Michael. Say good-bye to innocence.”

  Tom asked, “What happens if it goes up?”

  “Like a small nuke,” Shelley said.

  Sonia glanced around. “How close are we? . . . Too close, I guess. We ought to think about evacuation.”

  “It’s already in hand,” Gea said quietly. And, looking around, I saw that people were quietly being led out of the back of the marquee. Gea said, “The worst may not happen. There are measures in place.”

  Sonia didn’t say anything, but she looked dubious.

  I felt bemused, battered. I was aware of my heart beating sl
owly, steadily. It was all happening too quickly for me to take in. I didn’t even seem to be concerned that my son was standing with me here at ground zero. I just stood there, waiting to see what happened next.

  John tugged my sleeve, and drew me aside. “You saw her again, didn’t you?” he hissed.

  “What?”

  “Morag. You saw her. Just before Gea showed up. Listen, Michael.” He was conflicted, I saw, bursting with whatever he had to say, but still hesitant. He glanced back at Tom, to make sure he couldn’t hear. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  I almost laughed. “Now? Can’t it wait?”

  “It’s to do with Morag,” he said heavily, painfully. “Michael, if we don’t get through this—or if Morag shows up again, and she tells you herself—Lethe, I can’t believe I’m talking about a fucking ghost—”

  His intensity broke through my numbed detachment. “Tell me what, John?”

  He took a breath. “About me. Morag and me. Something you never knew. We meant to tell you—we didn’t want to hurt you—but we always waited, waited, and then she died, and I couldn’t bear to hurt you again.”

  “You had an affair.” Suddenly I saw it. Of course she had been a friend of John’s first. Even after our marriage they had worked together, she and John, the bio-prospector and the environmental-compensation lawyer, immersed in complex and urgent twenty-first-century issues. “All those times I was working, when travel was just impossible and I had to stay away, when Morag and Tom stayed with you—” In my head the events of those years shivered into fragments, whirled like kaleidoscope pieces, and came down in a different pattern.

  “We didn’t mean for it to happen,” John said, more defensive now. “All right? It wasn’t deliberate. But we were thrown together, and you weren’t there. You weren’t there, Michael. And then the baby . . .”

  “The baby who died,” I said stupidly. “The baby whose birth killed my wife. What about the baby?”

  But of course I knew the answer. The baby had never been mine.

  Tom was looking at us both through the crowd. His face was empty of expression. He knew something was wrong between us, but he didn’t know what.

  “I knew I had to tell you sometime,” John said desolately. “I never had the guts. And then Morag showed up. What if that’s why she’s come back, Michael? That’s what I keep asking myself. What if she’s come back to tell you what we did, me and her?”

  I don’t remember throwing the punch.

  People scattered around us, shocked. Suddenly John was on the floor, blood streaming from his mouth, and my fist felt as if I had slammed it against a wall.

  Shelley Magwood grabbed my arm and dragged me away. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on with you two, but we’ve got enough trouble here.”

  Around us the flow of VIPs out the back of the marquee was becoming noticeable. Barnette was still talking, but her message was now one of reassurance, admonitions to keep calm. And in the little fish tank, the tiny figure of the bomber was gesticulating, shouting tinnily at unseen negotiators.

  John slowly got to his feet. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  I said, “All right. I’m calm. Are they getting anywhere with the nut?”

  “He’s a suicide bomber,” Shelley said, her voice full of anger and despair. “What do you think?”

  “Can’t we just disable his trigger?”

  “Not remotely. He’s got it figured out pretty well. And he has a dead man’s switch.” She laughed, hollow. “The kid’s a good engineer. Our only hope is to talk him down. But we can’t even figure out what he wants.”

  “He probably wants many things.” Jack Joy stood beside me, sweating harder than ever. “Some even contradictory. But we all act for many reasons, don’t we?”

  I stared at him, trying to figure him out. “What the hell do you want? . . . Can you see this?”

  He tapped his ear. “I have my own channels.”

  Shelley glared at him. “Who are you? Have you got something to do with this?”

  He wouldn’t answer. He said mournfully, “It isn’t personal. Please believe that. I as an individual in fact sympathize with your goals, on this specific project; the hydrates are clearly a menace. But it’s what you represent, you see. The movement of which you have become a part. The philosophy behind your actions. The futile attempt to resist a change in the world’s natural order, when we should be relishing the opportunities opened up to us. The curtailing of our liberties in the process. The accruing of power by unelectable and unaccountable organizations and individuals.”

  It was a type of argument I had heard many times before. But this wasn’t the time for bullshit. I tried to grab his collar, but he was a VR; my hand passed harmlessly through his shirt, scattering flesh-colored pixels. I snapped, “If you’ve got some information, say so.”

  “I apologize,” he said almost formally. “Sincerely. I like you, Mike. I do, really!” He winked out of existence.

  And, two kilometers out to sea, the bomber pressed his trigger.

  Chapter 45

  “Awareness is the core of the Transcendence,” Leropa said to Alia. “Think of it as an awakening. In sleep you are aware only of yourself, your dreams and hopes and fears. It is consciousness of a sort, an awareness of self. But as you awake from sleep, you become more aware of yourself, and of a wider universe beyond your own head—and of other consciousnesses like your own, your parents, your siblings. It is essential. You must see the universe through their eyes, understand how they feel, before you can care.”

  “It is more than care,” Alia said. “It is love.”

  “Love, yes! Love is the full apprehension of another soul, and the cherishing of her. And through love you awaken to a new level, a full awareness of others, so your own consciousness expands further. This is a deep root of our very humanity,” Leropa said. “It is believed that consciousness evolved as a way to deal with other consciousnesses. So full self-awareness is not possible in isolation, but only through an engagement with other minds. And the deepest such engagement is through love.

  “Thus the Transcendence is built on awareness. On love as you have experienced it. But it is more than that, for the Transcendence is more than human.

  “The Transcendence reaches across all of space. Each new soul drawn into the Transcendence, like yourself, enriches the whole. And each new form of humanity, each with its own unique way of perceiving the universe, deepens and widens our apprehension of the universe. All of this is brought into the center and shared among all. It is no coincidence that the Transcendence’s political presence is called the Commonwealth, for this merged awareness is the true common wealth of mankind.

  “And there is more still. By reaching around the curves of time, the Transcendence is awakening to the past, too, awakening to the rich experience of every human who ever lived. This is an extension of the Commonwealth in time as well as space, to kinds of people who once existed, as well as those who exist now. In the end the universe will be like a jewel held in the palm of the hand, its every facet and glimmering refraction—yes, and every flaw—fully known and understood. This is the ultimate prize.

  “Why must the Transcendence aspire to this? Because it is essential if we are to survive. Alia, the more awake you become, the more control of your environment you acquire, and the more power over your destiny you acquire. We must escape from our long dreaming if we want to live!

  “And then there is our greater fate. Beyond the walls of time there are greater minds still, Alia. We call them monads. Our universe might not have been; there were other possibilities. Why our universe? Because of us—because of our potential to grow into a full apprehension of the cosmos, an expression of the objective cosmos in subjective awareness. So you see, Alia, we humans, through the Transcendence, will become the consciousness of the universe itself—and we will, we must, fulfill the great project of the monads.

  “And all of this is built on love!”

  Onc
e more Leropa had met Alia on Earth, beneath the ruin of the ancient Wignerian cathedral. After the intensity of emotions on the Nord, it was dismaying to return to the drab, subdued community of undying. Even Leropa was like a shadow. The undying aspired to something higher, but it was as if they had forgotten what it was to be human, Alia thought.

  It was almost a relief to plunge once more into the mysteries of the Transcendence.

  Now, with Leropa’s guidance, she thought she could see its immense transhuman ideas like vast clouds in the dark, and the thoughts that crackled like lightning between those clouds. And in every direction she could see the awareness of the Transcendence elaborating, multiplying, exponentiating, its vast intellect growing as she watched.

  But as they floated through this sky of consciousness, Leropa was not literally a guide for Alia, her words not a literal whisper in Alia’s ear. This was the Transcendence; Alia and Leropa were both parts of a greater whole, and yet expressions of it, as Alia’s own consciousness might briefly be focused on a bruised finger. But the mote that had been Alia found it helpful to cling to the metaphor of novice and guide.

  And now, here in the dark, Alia had come to learn the truth about Redemption, and she listened to Leropa speak of love.

  “The Transcendence loves you. The Transcendence loves every human. It must, for love is the full apprehension of another, and so of oneself. Love is the foundation of everything, Alia. Can you see that? And it is love, the cherishing even of the unhappy past, that has led to the Redemption. For the Transcendence to become complete we must redeem the suffering of the past—we must—and we can only do that by apprehending it, loving it.