by Tim Andersen
For whatever reason, Lika and I had missed not only that but the long trail that led to it from the Abbey on the Mountain. Seeing the thin strip wind around the foothills, I realized our oversight had been to head for the place the ship had landed rather than continuing along, what I now saw was, a dirt trail that started at the Abbey’s front gate and ended somewhere up the opposite mountain. Undoubtedly, this was how Smith had gotten there by day, but, by night, it was nearly invisible.
“How did you find us?” asked Lika.
Smith bent down, picked up a stick, and poked at the dirt with it as he walked, swishing it back and forth. “It was not hard to see you from my perch.”
“But the clothes and the liquor?”
He almost smiled. “There were only two possibilities as to what you two were doing there. If you two were truly inclined to do what it looked like you were doing, then I hope you would have had the sense to do it back at the Abbey rather than by the river in this frigid air. The other possibility was that you were in trouble and so I came prepared.”
Lika blushed. “Goshan nearly killed himself crossing the river. I only did---”
Smith held up his hand, and she stopped talking. “Far be it for me to question your survival skills, Lika.”
This statement sounded so charitable I could not believe it was coming from Smith. I wondered, as I followed behind them, what Lika had done for Smith that would make him compliment her like that.
While Smith and Lika walked on ahead, I had a chance to reflect on what had happened the night before. First of all was the realization that I had nearly died. I rarely thought about my own mortality. It was something that one easily loses sight of on a world of miracle medicines. Nevertheless, no matter what they did doctors could not extend human life much past a century on the average. In the colonies people still died around seventy-five. People died all the time, but it was rarely spoken about. Someone at the quarter century mark, like me, was expected to be unconcerned with it. Death was always something far off. Contemplating eternal nothingness, I shuddered. I struggled to think of something else.
I considered my second dilemma. If I had started to develop feelings for Lika before, feelings that had caused me to endanger my career and even my freedom, they were confused. She had saved me, and I felt grateful. In the movies, when the gallant knight saves the damsel, she swoons and falls madly in love with him. I was the damsel, she the knight, but I was not swooning. Instead I felt guilty because I had let her down. I had done something stupid, and she was forced to save my life. Now, I could not imagine that she would feel anything other than disgust for me. She had told me before to “be a man.” That was what she wanted, a real man, like her Dad seemed to have been, what Smith was. That was not who I was. Seeing her cling to Smith like he was a lifeline, I resolved to let my own feelings die.
Smith led us upward into the mountain. The climb to his “perch” was shorter than the one to the Abbey. It only took about a quarter of an hour. The dark recesses I had seen in the rock turned out to be carved Gothic arches. A number of them were simply recesses with small platforms in them. They almost looked like pedestals for statues, but there were no statues in them. There were five of these, three in a row above and one on either side of a door that opened directly into the mountain side. The path led up some stairs to the doorway.
The doorway itself was at least twice the height of a human being with massive iron hinges.
Smith approached the doorway and opened it. I expected a loud creak, a squeak from ancient bolts, but I heard nothing. From inside came a flickering light which turned out to be an iron chandelier hanging above an entry hall. The floor was paved with massive flagstones and the walls rounded and plastered.
Smith motioned for us to follow and led us into a room that appeared lived in. In a giant stone hearth burned a strong fire that warmed our faces and cast the room into a yellow glow. The room contained a bare wooden table, low to the ground with pads to sit on, a couple of mats that appeared to be made of river reeds, a wooden chest, and some cooking implements hug over the mantle. On the walls were depicted images of people. They seemed to be telling a story but I didn't have time to examine them closely.
In one corner of the room I saw a stone pedestal hollowed out on top to form a bowl. In the bowl was some water. From the ceiling hung a tube or rope at the end of which was suspended a wooden ring with spokes radiating from the interior to a rounded, downward pointing cone. It gave the look of an elaborate pendulum, but at the moment it was stationary.
“The Amidans didn't tell us what you were doing here,” said Lika. “We thought you might be in danger.”
“If there is one thing I have discovered about the Amidans, they to play their cards close to their chests. Like me, they recognize the power of knowledge and the value of secrets. Of course,” he said, gesturing for us to sit at the table, “knowledge is worse than ignorance if it’s wrong. You two remember that before you take drastic action based on faulty conclusions again.”
He went over to a pot where something was simmering, scooped out some into a couple of bowls and set them before us. In my bowl was something green with flecks of orange in it. “Peas porridge,” he said, “like the nursery rhyme, but this is quite fresh I assure you. You’d find better fare across the valley, I’m sure.”
“Do you want us to leave?” said Lika, while I tucked into the hot, salty porridge, with no intention of moving.
“Not yet,” he said, “not before you understand some things. Now eat. Quickly.”
While we ate, Smith toyed with the pendulum, swinging it from side to side. I could see out of the corner of my eye water dripping from the end of the cone. From this angle, I could see notches on the inside of the basin. I couldn’t guess at its purpose though. I supposed it had none, perhaps a religious artifact.
When we had finished, he motioned to a basin of soapy water which was already somewhat dirty. I stood confused for a minute. “Well, Fenn,” he said, “this isn’t a hotel. Here we wash our bowls.”
Lika and I washed our bowls in a wooden basin and set them next to some others. Smith picked up the basin of water then and dumped it down a grate in the floor.
“Before I tell you anything more. Explain to me what you have seen and heard,” said Smith. Lika started to speak when he held up a finger. “Be sure to leave out no detail, no matter how insignificant.”
Smith listened carefully, saying nothing while Lika recounted what had happened in the crypt. When she mentioned again that Crispin had taken the ship, all he said was, “Crispin always was a coward.” Then she described what the Abbot had told us.
“You say the Abbot showed you this in some kind of simulated environment?” he said. “He didn’t just describe it?” We both shook our heads. “Interesting,” he said. He looked down at the table in thought.
We looked at him expectantly. He looked up sharply, as if just noticing we were there. “What you have told me,” he said, “gives strong support to a theory I have been working on for some time, even before this mission. I will say nothing more about it at present. Not yet.” He lapsed back into thought.
Finally, Lika said, “what’s been going on here, Tolan?”
“What do you think has been going on? I've been studying. I have . . .” he trailed off, as if searching for the right word. “I have learned a great deal from this place. Especially about the Amidans.”
“Like what?” I said.
He paused, as if sifting through his store of knowledge, then said, “all of this,” he said, gesturing, “this planetoid, this valley, the mountains, all of it are a replica of a place that once existed on the Amidan’s home planet.”
“Where is it?”
“Why Earth, of course,” he said.
“What do you mean? You believe all that about the Amidans ancestry?”
“It makes perfect sense. Shall I spell it out for you?” he said.
I nodded.
“I thought you were a
mathematician, Fenn,” he said. “Didn’t you study quantum gravity?”
I shook my head again. “Banach spaces.”
“Banach spaces,” he said, scoffing. “I can’t think of a more useless topic.”
“Well what about it?” I said.
“If you were familiar with the theory of quantum gravity, you would also be familiar with quantum cosmology.”
“What does the theory of the universe have to do with the Amidans being human?”
“A great deal. It explains how they have come to be here, seemingly from the future, but not.”
“A parallel world?” said Lika.
“That would be a somewhat accurate but faulty interpretation,” he said, almost generous. “As they themselves claim, they appear to be from a distant past, but, that too, is a faulty interpretation.”
We both looked confused.
Smith, assuming his preferred role as lecturer, continued, “modern quantum gravity posits that the universe is not a four dimensional container, as Einstein and Minkowski claimed. There is no container, and nothing moves.”
This was news to me. “No motion?” I said, waving my hand as if to prove him wrong.
“Of course, things move, Fenn, just not the way we think that they do. Instead the universe is made up of states or configurations. The space of all possible configurations is the true universe, static, motionless. Each configuration contains a complete copy of our universe. So rather than a being moving in spacetime, you are a string of copies, each slightly different than the rest, each of which is ‘activated’ in the present moment.”
I thought I had heard of this theory but had filed it away under “things that I don’t understand and don’t want to understand”.
“Philosophers still struggle with what it means for it to be ‘now’ rather than yesterday or tomorrow,” he continued. “Be that as it may, imagine that you die. Your body decays; time, as it is said, passes. You’re insensible. Conditions are not sufficient for you to ‘exist’. The universe has better things to do than worry about you. However, as vast quantities of time pass, as the universe dies into nothingness and is reborn, the probability of your return increases. One day your number will come up.”
“What the hell?” I said.
“Think of it like a lottery, Fenn. Maybe your chance of winning is one in a million, but, if you keep buying a ticket every week, chances are you’ll win one day. If you play for twenty thousand years, you even have a good chance of winning. With conscious awareness the chances are vastly smaller but not quite zero. And since you’re dead, you won’t notice if a few eons pass.”
“But if the universe dies,” I said, “then won’t the chance be zero? I mean---a person can’t appear in empty space out of stray radiation.”
“You forget that with quantum mechanics, almost anything can come out of nothing: a person, a planet, even a universe. Another Big Bang can happen. Life can rise on Earth again or somewhere else. Maybe it will take a few Big Bangs, maybe as many as there are particles in the universe. When you’re dead, you can afford to wait. Your new life will be very different than the one you had before---you might not even be human---but it will be a life, nonetheless. You will not remember your old life either, I dare say.”
This was creeping me out. “And you learned all this from the Amidans’ fairytales?”
“They are much more than fairytales,” he scoffed. “They are a history told in narrative, from the perspective of the followers of a woman called---”
“Mateya,” I said. “Yes, the Abbot told us.”
Smith looked annoyed at the interruption. “As I was saying, their knowledge of the universe is far beyond ours. I could not even say how they do it, but somehow, they have developed the ability to choose their next ‘lives’ and to have a full recollection of what occurred before. Their ancient stories, painted on the walls of this place---” He gestured behind him where I could see images of people who appeared to be human. “---tell of the development of this ability, how they were once as flawed as we are, and how most of their species was destroyed as individual power became too much for their limited morality. Only those with the greatest self-control survived the process.”
“You mean they are all powerful, reincarnated beings?” said Lika.
“Don’t use that word,” he said with a sneer. “It smacks of religion. This is factual deduction.” He went over the strange pendulum. “Take this,” he said, “I saw you looking at it Fenn. What is it?”
“Some sort of decoration?” I suggested.
“A decoration, no! It has a precise and useful purpose.”
“It’s a waterclock,” said Lika.
Smith looked pleased. “Yes, and this is the point. What to us looks like magic and religion often has a scientific explanation. It need not be advanced or couched in esoteric mathematics. It need only be beyond the scope of the familiar.” Smith gave the pendulum a tap and it swung slightly as it dripped.
“Why are they here then?”
“I have learned that the Amidans are not native to our. . .plane of existence. They have travelled from another instance of our universe, where they are post-humans, to ours where we exist as proto-Amidans.”
“But why?”
“That I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I believe it to be important or they would not have come. Perhaps, you might figure it out,” he said, “but I’m not keeping my fingers crossed.” He looked up, over our shoulders. We turned. “Somebody’s here for you,” said Smith.
The door opened and there was Brother Amor. He glanced at each of us before addressing me. “The Prioress sends word requesting that you both return to the Abbey. She says it is urgent,” said Amor.
“You must go,” said Smith.
“But what about you?” said Lika.
“I have no need of you here,” he said. “I do expect you to cooperate with the Amidans though. Go. If the Prioress says it’s urgent, then you should run.”
He pushed us towards the door then bade us wait a moment. He went to the wooden chest and opened it. Rummaging in it for a moment he pulled out a sheaf of parchment. He thrust these into Lika’s hands, saying, “backup copies of my notes.” Then he opened the door and ushered us out.
As we descended the steps with Brother Amor, he called out, “stick to the trail, and Lika, if Fenn falls into the river again, I expressly order you not to save him.” I think this was Smith’s form of a joke although he said it without smiling.
The door in the mountain slammed shut.
We did not run back. Instead, Brother Amor proceeded at a more leisurely pace than we felt was required, and we quickly left him behind. Alone I said to Lika, “are you worried?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Tolan knows what he’s doing, I think. I just wish I did.”
“Do you think he might be in danger?”
“If the Amidans had wanted him dead, they’d have done it. They want something more. I trust Tolan to know if he’s in danger anyway.”
“Do you think it’s true?” I said.
“What?” she said.
“About what Smith said,” I said, “about the Amidans being from another ‘plane of existence’?”
“That? I don’t know. The stuff Tolan talked about, the quantum gravity and the alternate universes, is old stuff. Physicists have known about it for at least a century.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought it was some kind of Amidan religion.”
“No,” she said, “of course, religious people have believed in reincarnation for a long time.”
“Like Buddhists?” I said. She looked surprised. “I saw the projection in your office,” I explained.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “He relaxes me. Reminds me to laugh when I’m down. Tolan doesn’t like it. He thinks religions are against reason. Maybe some are, and I’m not sure I would call myself a Buddhist. I always follow my head.”
“But you do believe reincarnation?”
“It’s a probabil
istic argument,” she said. “We used to use the same arguments to show that there ought to be intelligent life in the universe before we discovered it. It’s good enough for me.”
“So if I had died back there . . .”
She completed my sentence. “From your perception of time, you might be getting born right now, but don’t worry, you weren’t that close to dying, or you wouldn’t be walking and talking right now.”
We walked in silence for a while. I was working up the courage to smooth things over. After what had happened between us only a short time before, I felt like I needed to say something to make things alright. “Look, Lika,” I said, feeling awkward and uncomfortable, “about---”
She cut me off. “It’s fine Goshan,” she said.
“But---”
“No, it’s fine, really,” she said. “I’ve trained in that sort of thing, you have to when you do the sorts of sports I used to do.”
“But, you-you haven’t done that before.”
“No, not exactly. I’ve come close. It’s not something I like doing.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling irrationally insulted. Silence for a minute. I gulped. “And Smith?”
She rounded on me, her eyes blazing with anger. “Look Goshan, just stop it, alright? I know you want to talk about it, but I don’t, so just stop. Go take it up with your therapist or something.” She stormed off up the mountain at a pace I could not possibly match. I stood there, shocked and deeply sad.
I walked in silence brooding when, all of a sudden, Brother Amor was walking beside me. “I am sorry, friend Goshan, if I startled you,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, “no, I was just thinking. I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry,” he said. “These are difficult times for you.”
“Oh, it’s not that. Yeah, there’s a lot going on, but, well, it’s personal.”
“No, no,” he said, “I know. You and---” he gestured ahead to where Lika was hiking up the path.
“Yeah,” was all I said.
We walked together in silence for a long time and then, “how long have you known each other?” he asked