Engineering Infinity

by Charles Stross

  "It's a shame that you didn't keep on with your medical studies. But maybe you're a better brewmeister."

  His anger vanished, and he smiled. She was still the same old nosy, bossy Auntie. He returned the package to his pocket. "Probably. I take bottles of the best batches to the monks. Roshi seems to have quite a taste for it."

  Liliha brushed back strands of startling white hair with a weathered brown hand, put the hand atop Kyo's, and patted it. "I don't blame you drinking beer, Kyo. Not that you ever cared about the old ways, but it's the end of a nu'u. A cycle. Pele, she has called down fire. Not some little beach fire to cook fish on. It will be big. She's mad. Damned mad."

  Kyo had heard her superstitions since he was a baby. Pele, the Volcano Goddess with her wild, long, lava-black hair, was always mad about something. "Come." She slid from her stool. "I want you to meet someone."

  "Why not." Kyo picked up his bag of groceries: economy size peanut butter, Wonder Bread, and shoyu. Once they were out on the street, he followed the old woman toward Diamond Head. Enveloped by the heat and the roar of traffic, they passed the Hukilau, one of Kyo's favourite bars, one in a long string of favourite bars. He almost dropped out of the trek in favour of another cold beer. But wasn't this the place that he'd gotten in a fight with some Koreans a few nights back? Yeah, yeah; flashing lights, as an ambulance took the Korean to Queens Hospital, and he slipped down an alley, eluding the police. He had a knack for starting arguments, even though he was sure that he hadn't said much of anything. He never did. Anyway, Liliha strode down the sidewalk with surprising speed, showing no sign of wanting to stop.

  In forty-five minutes they were in Waikiki. Condos loomed overhead. Haole and Japanese tourists swarmed the streets, clad in flower-print imitation of a culture which never existed.

  He followed Liliha as she turned off King Street. Soon, they came to a canal Kyo had not been to before. It shimmered quietly, a stark contrast to the bustling streets a few blocks over. Liliha entered a warren of branching docks holding sheds, houses, and tiny islands within their arms.

  Finally, she stopped. "This is the one." She walked up to the door of a sagging white frame house supported by pilings jutting from slow-moving water. The sounds of the city were gone; he heard instead sussurating surf and the omnipresent click of palm fronds in the light trade wind.

  Liliha knocked, but did not wait for an answer. She motioned him inside, where light leaked into a dim, cool room through pulled blinds. "Kalihi?"

  As Kyo's eyes adjusted, he saw a room where ancient Hawaiian fishhooks and stone pounding tools mixed casually with an old lady's overstuffed, lace-protected chairs.

  An unusual midnight blue chunk of lava caught his attention. He had never seen lava that colour. But just as he touched it, he heard Auntie say, "There you are, you stubborn old lady!"

  "I'm not stubborn, only hard of hearing," someone said. Kyo followed the voices onto the deeply shadowed back porch.

  Kalihi, who looked Hawaiian, nodded at him as he stepped into her cool oasis. Unlike Liliha, she was thin, but she too was Hawaiian-tall. Her face was an intense, thin blade, almost masklike, lit by blazing eyes so black they might be blue. Hair more shockingly white than Liliha's flowed over her shoulders as she stood on one of the tamati mats covering her porch floor. Her spare, focused stillness put Kyo in mind of a heron at work. The heavy, sweet scent of plumeria blossoms mingled with salt; the thin blue line of the sea lay beyond. A tea of poi, lomi lomi salmon, and taro broth arranged for three, and a flask of sake, sat on a low, black table.

  "Sit." She gestured toward cushions. After dropping onto her cushion, quite easily for such an ancient-looking woman, she stared straight at Kyo, smiled, and poured him a tiny glass of sake, her long, elegant fingers a ballet of unconscious grace augmented by the flowing Asian sleeves of her black garment.

  They watched surf dance through a frame of palm trees all afternoon, but when Kyo finally left, he couldn't remember what had been said as he rode the bus back to Nuuanu. Yet he felt immense peace. As the small houses and neighbourhood Chinese restaurants on every block caught the evening light, the scent of wok-stirred garlic and ginger blew through the open windows. He rested in the cleansed, bright aftermath of the day, more at peace than he'd been in years. He had felt that way after seeing Liliha ever since he was a child, no matter how annoying she could be.

  But all too soon the thoughts she had interrupted in the Pantheon returned. He was a Zen monk now? He was fooling nobody. He wasn't fit to be a monk, any more than he had been fit to be a doctor or a husband.

  Now the bus started and stopped in loud, grinding fits. The sun hurt his eyes even through his sunglasses. He felt old and stupid, and the fact that he'd left his bread and shoyu at that woman's house was proof of his innate, habitual irresponsibility.

  His familiar desolation returned. Meaning could drop out of life with frightening ease, leaving just the dead frame. Those glimmers of wide understanding, those tenshos he clung to - even though, of course, one was not supposed to - would never blossom into enlightenment for him.

  When he returned to the zendo, he walked the stepping-stone path through the carefully raked sea of sand considering how best to tell Roshi that he was quitting. It wouldn't be the first time.

  As he entered the inner compound, he stopped.

  Roshi was speaking to creatures with wings. Not, thankfully, angels. Instead, they were slim, almost emaciated, and slightly blue. They wore no clothes, but it did not seem as if they had skin; rather, it might have been the shortest imaginable fur, or the sleekness of an alligator.

  Kyo's breath quickened. He knew Roshi was aware of him, though Roshi did not so much as flick a glance in his direction.

  Roshi gasshoed low.

  The creature gasshoed as well, then kneeled on long, slim limbs and touched forehead to ground. He - or she - rose, bowed, and walked around the corner.

  "Roshi!" Kyo screamed, as the old man prepared to walk away.

  Roshi turned. "You will say nothing," he commanded.

  And within half an hour, before Kyo had time to consider whether to say nothing or not, much less to whom, he and the other monks were ushered onto a luminous ship hovering behind the zendo. How had it gotten here? It must have just... appeared. His doctor's mind, which surfaced so rarely now, had only seconds to consider the scientific implications. He shouted at everyone - Roshi, the creatures, the other monks - then, with a flip of mind, became silent. Why not? What did he have to lose? Getting upset was almost laughable.

  The creatures settled them on couches and prepared them for the journey with gentle gestures. Then, he knew nothing save for his brief memory, until the group of monks woke alone, in their new little colony. How much later was it? Earth was a cinder, Roshi said; time was no longer a thing they could comprehend, and they had only themselves.

  The monks, eyes downcast, hands clasped, walked with slow measured steps in ritual kinhin. Now the light was dim, but soon it would sear the bleak landscape. Kyo reached his cushion and sat. One, he counted. One.

  The disturbing creatures were there in his thoughts once more, creatures with wings. Their elongated bodies were delicate. Two sets of opposing digits were on each hand: one was a sharp, yet supremely flexible set which could reach inside delicate machinery and set it to rights. The other set, shorter and three-jointed, was suitable for most other tasks.

  Kyo concentrated on one isolated image.

  He had wakened, briefly, to those fingers touching his face, to eyes which did not look directly at him but were instead concentrated on a task which sounded metallic to his sleep-drenched brain. Perhaps the mechanism which kept him alive during the journey, which must have taken several lifetimes, had needed some adjustment. That impression was surrounded by darkness. It was all he had.

  His thoughts jumped to his fellow monks. Geckos! Insects! Couldn't they see how everything had changed? Didn't they care?

  Whack! Roshi hit him on the back. He straightened. On
e. One.

  Later, in the garden, Kyo struggled with a huge watering can. Itchy sweat trickled beneath his white garment. He set the can down and wiped his face. He wanted a beer. He arched his back to relieve the pain, and endured his useless memories of the bars of Honolulu. "'Pain is awakening,'" he mimicked Roshi. Crap. If he'd never gone to the zendo, he'd be blessedly dead now, and pain-free.

  They'd been here for what he called months. They'd awakened in this small compound, ready, it seemed, for inhabitants, with growing plants that flourished in the hot wind, which seemed to provide them with enough food; he hadn't noticed any indication of nutritional deficiencies. To the contrary, they all seemed hearty. Their garden was large enough for their number: twenty monks. The vegetables were somewhat familiar - a tuberous starchy knob they called hasa, and a chewy leaf they called lettuce, more sustaining than earth lettuce. Two types of trees bore fruit. The grains could be cooked or ground into a flour for noodles. They required only water from the spring which spouted like a miracle in its tiny blue rock pool.

  Kyo pulled slim metal rods from their sockets and carried the awning to its next post. The plants had to be shaded or they would burn. Kyo complained to himself once again that, though he could brew some beer with these ingredients, there wasn't enough to spare after the noodles were made. He considered once again how to enlarge the garden.

  Kyo could tell that Roshi was behind him. He stood and wiped his hands. "When will we see them?" he demanded.

  "See who?"

  "The winged ones who brought us here. You know that I saw them! You allowed this! We had no choice. The other monks may accept everything you say, but you are no holier than I am, no more great, no more full of Buddha-mind."

  Roshi's eyes glimmered with fun. The hint of a smile touched his face. "You are doing well, Kyo. Quite well. Remember when you came to the zendo? Too weak to want to live at all, much less argue with a Roshi."

  He gasshoed and strode off, leaving Kyo angry and still wanting a beer. The precious packet of yeast he had shown Liliha had remained in his pocket during the voyage. It frustrated him to see the smooth, promising powder, so he kept the bag under his mat, where he wouldn't have to look at it. The resources here were meagre, and he needed to start exploring if he wanted to brew beer.

  "Have you seen them?" Kyo asked that night as he tossed on his mat, sleepless.

  "Who?" asked Rica. His tone of voice did not invite conversation.

  "The creatures with wings. The beautiful ones who brought us here."

  "Roshi brought us here."

  "Where do you think you are, anyway? Earth?" Kyo was getting angry again; he always did when Rica acted this way. "Earth is ruined, burned. Why didn't we burn with it?"

  Rica sighed. "We have to get up in three hours. Does it matter where we are? We have food and water."

  "Right. Some bowls, some watering cans, some cook pots. It's like a penal colony."

  "It's an endless sesshin. An opportunity. We have our minds. We can do zazen. We can achieve enlightenment." He rolled over.

  Why is my mind so much different than his mind? wondered Kyo. He stared into the darkness and once more apologized to Io. Well, Io, it's like this. You worked hard and did everything Dad wanted you to do and you're dead. I was a worthless sonofabitch, so inhuman that I drove my wife crazy, a deadbeat and a drunk, and I'm alive. Hey, does it make sense to you?

  Tears welled up, and overflowed onto his cheeks. I've got tears in my ears from lying on my back in bed and crying over you. Was that how it went? He'd never cried when he could drink. Emotions had to come out sometime, somehow, medical dogma claimed, but he'd tried to postpone that time until someone knocked him over the head in a dark alley and killed him.

  He hummed the tune, then chortled. Riku made a sour warning snort.

  "Silence, O revered Bodhisattva Riku." Kyo laughed until the laughs turned into long, ragged sobs, which Riku, as usual, ignored.

  And after that, just before sleep, there was a slight, clean time in his mind. The image of the winged one he had seen with Roshi appeared.

  The eyes were violet. They seemed deep and sad, but Kyo doubted that emotion was for them as it was for him. The head was an irregular ellipsoid, and he could tell no sex. The wings themselves were pale, streaked with luminescent colour, and arched high over the shoulders of the slim being, who stood monk-straight in the rock garden in the zendo on Nuuanu Avenue. He was not looking at Kyo, but at Roshi, who nodded once.

  The next morning, as Kyo sat, a small light grew within him until it swallowed the darkness. It was gentle but insistent, and he could find no centre to it.

  He let it engulf that which was looking for a centre.

  When he opened his eyes, all the other monks were gone. In front of him on the floor, wobbling in the hot breeze, was a leaf-shaped, stiff piece of thin, almost-transparent colour. Just a piece of colour. Almost breathless, he reached out and found it rough and dry, the texture of an old seed pod. He put it in his pocket and rose.

  He had missed breakfast.

  "It isn't my Buddha-mind that's taking me, Roshi. It's my human mind!" shouted Kyo. "I'm going crazy!"

  "They are the same," replied Roshi. He handed Kyo a flask of water. "Please turn back at midday. Then the next time, you can try a different direction. If you continue until night and find no water, you are dead."

  Kyo shrugged.

  "Please return."

  So Kyo did. He explored seven vectors, as best he could tell, returning for seven nights with the empty flask and the bag of yeast he always took, his talisman, his only piece of Earth. He also took the piece of colour. It was a rich rose, shot through with narrow streaks of olive green.

  "There's nothing out there," he said. "Nothing but lava - blue, shiny, glittery lava. I'll just have to go for a whole day."

  On the eighth day, he took the awkward watering can as well. He lashed a thin, rolled-up sleeping mat to his back and included a good supply of dried noodles, which could soak in his drinking water.

  As usual, he could not interpret the look in Roshi's eyes as they stood on the edge of their little encamp-ment. "Remember your Bodhisattva vow," he said.

  "No matter how numberless the beings, I vow to enlighten them all."

  "Make that the source of your every thought and action," Roshi said, then turned away.

  On the second day, he found the body.

  It was desiccated. It hadn't rotted; it had dried.

  Kyo had lost a good deal of his water supply to evaporation and had been thinking of turning back. Now, he changed his mind. He squatted and examined the dead creature.

  All the colour had gone out of its wings. He flaked away long, thin scales of translucent, mica-like material. Thin, bony limbs fitted close to its body, as if it had been very cold before death.

  That night Kyo slept in a smooth volcanic hollow, its glass-hardness softened little by his mat.

  When he woke, it was to deep violet eyes, compassionate and sad. The wings were backlit by sunlight, and colours sped across their surface, brilliant, elusive. Its skin was dull olive; fantastic digits folded in a complex arrangement as it held its hands at the centre of its chest.

  Its entire heart and mind entered its plea, which was precise and unmistakable: Help us.

  How? Kyo found himself asking silently, forming the question with a telepathic facility he had not known he possessed.

  Come.

  Kyo rose, rolled his mat, adjusted his robes. Hoisting his burden, he followed the creature as their shadows grew ever shorter.

  Kyo's attempts to communicate with it frustrated him. He tried to find the space from which he had spontaneously asked "How," but could not. Or perhaps he did, and the creature was not in a conversational mood. It strode before him, perfectly erect, graceful. After the first hour, Kyo entered a state of kinhin, walking zen. He absorbed the ropy contours of the lava without thinking about where to step; his legs carried him forward; the sun became very, very hot.
/>   Observe.

  Kyo allowed his attention to shift into sight. Startled, he saw mountains where there had been none earlier in the day. The sun had passed its zenith and he wondered at his ability to forgo water for so long. Immediately, he uncapped his water bottle and drank. Then he offered it to the creature, who, to his surprise, accepted it with a grave gassho and drank as well.

  Almost there, he heard.

  Buddha be praised! he found himself answering.

  The creature looked into his eyes, and he fancied he saw a smile there.

  When they arrived at the cliffs, it took three winged creatures to fly Kyo up, and he was afraid even then that they would lose power and plummet back onto the sharp lava below. Their wings beat against the air ever more slowly. Relax, he heard. Your stiffness adds to the difficulty.

  He allowed his fear to be an object, like the cliff face which moved downward with laborious slowness. Their speed increased. Better.

  Once they reached the lip, others reached down and dragged him up. Long digits curled around his upper arms like snakes. As he gained his feet and looked about, he was not particularly surprised to see a group.

  When they gasshoed as a body, he automatically gasshoed back. But when he heard, Greetings, Roshi, he emphatically shook his head. I am no roshi, he replied, counting nineteen of them.

  You have come to teach us your ways. Have you not taken a vow?

  A vow? Yes. I vow to save all beings, no matter how numberless. Or how strange and inhuman, he added to himself before going on. I am not qualified to do what you wish.

  If you cannot give us the transmission, we will die.

  He found that difficult to believe. If humans do not achieve enlightenment, they do not die. Even as he thought it, a part of his mind demurred. Old philosophy questions from college, snippets from the Bible and the Sutras thrust themselves forward, a small crowd of dissenters. He sighed. I am very tired.