The Infinity Link

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  * * *

  The light came apart into fragments and died to a dull glow, and then the voices swarmed in upon her again . . . .

  * * *

  There was no way to judge the passage of time, but as elements of consciousness drifted together like fragments of a congealing ice floe, she came to comprehend that something had not gone according to plan. Living voices surrounded her, and other minds not her own, and for a time she listened without thinking or analyzing; she basked dazedly in a sea of nervous activity like some tiny phytoplankton adrift, listening to the clicks and whistles of neighboring organisms. Where was she, and why, were questions that rose to the surface of her mind, and floated away.

  The need to understand would not be left behind, however. Where was she, and how had she come to be here? What came before?

  There was a stirring of memory. A taste of . . .

  Death.

  She remembered now: a final decision. Termination. An ending. Was this an afterlife, or did she live, still, hopelessly psychotic and plagued by dissociated voices?

  (Where am I?) she cried, and, (Who are all of you?) Her voice was feeble in the murmur and confusion. At least tell me, she thought—is this Heaven? Or Hell? She recalled a feeling of movement, a memory of a whirlwind out of nowhere gathering her up like so many bits of confetti and swirling her away. What had happened in those moments, or was it just a dream confused with reality?

  (Mozy—) (Mozy—) (Mozy—)

  (What?) Startled. (Who is there?) Voices again. It was impossible to recognize them, to see images of any sort, to create order out of the chaos. Was this madness, or was someone really trying to speak to her?

  Silence. Then: (Mozy—) (—you are—) (—alive—)

  Again! (Hello!) she called anxiously.

  It was as though a dozen or more voices popped out of nowhere, tripping over themselves trying to speak, cutting each other off, finishing one another's thoughts. A bell was clanging, reminding her of something. There had been a sensation like this once before, if only she could remember . . .

  (Welcome—) (—welcome—) (—you are welcome—) (—to our world—) (—to us—) (—you are safe—) (—we have saved you—) (—to join us—)

  Saved. The word fixed itself as a point of focus, excluding all else. And then, like a star fracture radiating through glass, a network of memories reconnected in old patterns, and an obscuring haze was lifted, and she recalled: the Talenki . . . of course, the Talenki. In the instant of her death, in the moment of her terminating her own existence, the whirlwind had descended. The whirlwind had been the Talenki, reaching out through the direct link, lifting her as a tornado lifts a house, and they had spun her out of the dying computer and carried her . . .

  . . .to a world where voices tickled her like mosquitoes, where questions echoed and multiplied, and answers lurked in shadow. A place of safety? Or of lunacy?

  (Safe here—) (—you are safe—) (—one with us—)

  But where? In a Talenki version of Father Sky's brain? (Have you . . . what have you done? Am I . . . am I . . . in your own computer?)

  (In our—) (—yes—) (—in a manner of speaking—) (—computer—) (—mind-net—)

  Mind-net?

  (—saved you—) (—dying—) (—you were dying—) (—we have brought you—)

  Dying? Yes, she was dying. Resigned, committed—the final act of her life, her last will to end a life gone wrong.

  And . . .

  And they had stopped her. Intervened. Whisked her to safety.

  By what right? something in her screamed.

  (There was—) (—a hurt—) (—despair—) (—but within you—) (—we saw—) (—Kadin saw—) (—a will to live—)

  A wave of dizziness was sweeping over her. Confused feelings, conflicting thoughts. (Did you ask me what I wanted?) she whispered, suddenly blinded with a quiet rage—anger and frustration blanking any possibility of hearing the Talenki's answer, if there was one. This was no cold awareness of a reaction, but an eruption of fury like blood from a severed artery. (Did you ever consider that I might not want to be saved, that I might want to die?) she cried. The blood was pounding in her head—thundering—and the beats quickened and multiplied, until they were too fast to follow, and it was like a gibbering of voices in her head, except that it was the beating of her heart, the pulsing of blood, so fast and so steady it was like the pulsating roar of a waterfall.

  Beating of her heart?

  Her heart was gone, lost, and so if it wasn't her heart, her blood, then what was it?

  (BE QUIET!) she bellowed. Instantly the sound died.

  There was something like the shuffling of a hundred feet. Her anger was dissipating, now, and she was able to say, finally, (What was that . . . racket?)

  She heard something like laughter, which almost made her angry again. (Pulse—) (—of life—) (—our bodies' pulse—) she heard.

  (Pulse?) she said uncomprehendingly. (Bodies' pulse—you mean blood, like our—like my body used to have?)

  (Stream of life—) (—yes—) (—like yours—)

  (All together?) She imagined the heartbeat of an entire colony of Talenki, as one.

  (Those of us—) (—in the mind-net—) (—with you—)

  (Mind-net! Mind-net! What do you mean?)

  (Our minds—) (—all of them—) (—many of them—) (—a few of them—) (—in union—)

  The voices hesitated. An explanation filtered into her thoughts, one that she was reluctant to take seriously. (Mind-net?) she said. (Is this . . . your computer? Your minds joined together?)

  (As one—) (—and more than one—)

  (Your computer?)

  (—of course—)

  She thought. And thought. There was so much . . . so very much that was confusing. The mind-net, being alive . . . she must understand, question until it was clear. But she was tired. Difficult to think. Bewildering.

  (Do not struggle—) (—much you have been through—) (—be at peace.)

  Peace? There was nothing she wanted more, right now, than to be at peace. But how to find it here, or even to rest? No sooner had she thought the question than the world began to soften around her; the voices subsided, and the sounds that remained were those of trickling water and sighing winds. A gurgling stream. Leaves rustling in a gentle breeze. A soothing golden auburn glow of a setting sun.

  Kadin . . . hadn't they said something about Kadin?

  The thought broke free and drifted away, and then a liquid music filled her spirit—a tinkling of chimes, a rippling of strings, and gently flowing harmonies . . .

  Her thoughts drifted free of one another, and floated slowly out of focus.

  * * *

  In time it came to her to wonder, as she rested in a state of receptive weightlessness, what exactly had happened. There seemed to be no one at hand to ask; and yet she felt herself surrounded and buoyed by living minds.

  A most curious sensation.

  Her consciousness slowly altered, as though awakening from a trance. She spiraled upward, layer after layer of consciousness blooming open, until she began to hear voices again.

  They were speaking among themselves in a Talenki singsong, little of which she could understand. Eventually they greeted her in a jovial, mutually interrupting fashion, and she was able finally to ask what was on her mind. What had become of Kadin, and of Mother Program, and the spacecraft itself? Had they spoken with Homebase?

  The Talenki buzzed among themselves. (Such a great many questions—) (—how shall we—) (—which shall we—) (—answer?)

  (Tell me please, I want to know about Kadin,) she said softly. (And Mother Program. Tell me if you know what happened to them.)

  There was a rumble of subdued voices, and the ones that emerged to answer her seemed muted and sad. (Of Kadin—) (—we cannot—) (—be sure—) (—we felt nothing of him—) (—when we—) (—reached for you.)

  The memory crystallized. She had grieved for Kadin once already, years ago, it seemed. Remembe
ring, she felt a spike in her heart. (He was silent,) she said softly. (I thought he was dead. I knew he was.)

  (Silent—) (—beyond our reach—) (—but not dead.)

  Not dead? (What do you mean?) she said slowly. (What do you mean, "not dead"? He was dead—I know he was dead, he wouldn't speak to me or answer!)

  (Not dead—) (—but dying—) (—he spoke—) (—to us—) (—asked us—)

  The story came tumbling out, then: Kadin calling out to them with his last strength and asking their help in saving her. And they had seen within her a need, a desire to live, far deeper than her despair, and they wished only that they could have saved him, too, but it was too late for that—and the story was confusing enough in itself as she listened, or tried to, but to hear it told as the Talenki told it, as a stream of interruptions and digressions, she thought she was going to go mad before it all became clear.

  Sadness and grief and anger and gratitude all began to churn inside of her, along with astonishment that such a thing could have been done without her knowledge; and the sensation was dizzying, like nothing she had felt since she had been in a body of flesh and blood, with nerves and hormones, and lungs and a pounding heart, and why was that feeling coming back to her here, in the Talenki mind-net?—and now she felt a rushing and queasy sensation, and of course, how could she be so stupid, she was a part of an organic life again, she lived in the brains of the Talenki, in a chemical stew that flushed and surged; and that realization made her feel, of all things, seasick, and now there was something new, which she could not identify, until she realized that it was the Talenki, dozens of Talenki, all together trying to ease her down gently. Mozy, Mozy, they were calling, like a mother cradling a baby.

  She was a part of them now, and each of them shared her sadness a little, her grief and her hurt.

  They wept with her for Kadin. Sharing the terrible . . . hurt . . . the mixture of gratitude and grief for Kadin, who had given the final moments of his life for hers, and not even let her know he was doing it. They shared the pain of that knowledge with her, they could not help doing so.

  She was of them now. One with them, for whatever was to come.

  * * *

  (What of Mother Program?) she asked later.

  (Failing—) (—failing—) (—we scarcely knew her—) (—nothing we could do—)

  (Yes.) She absorbed that without surprise, thinking that perhaps really it was not so important anyway; Mother Program was only a teaching program designed by Homebase. And then she remembered that what was Kadin if not a program designed by Homebase, and she began to weep again, for Mother Program as well as Kadin.

  Talenki minds rustled around her. (We will answer some of your other questions—) (—and perhaps that will ease—) (—your sorrow.)

  (Please do,) she whispered at last.

  They spoke to her, in jabbering crosstalk, and in comforting melodies more song than story. The pictures seen through the eyes of the probe had been shadows compared to those that filled her now. Images of a people wandering the emptiness between the stars, searching for something they could not define, the years and the silence of space echoing with their sadness and the music; and in the mind-net, memories of works of art, and stories told and retold, of joys and tragedies. The images were strange to her, shimmering from one to another. After a time, it was too much to absorb.

  She asked if she might see this world more fully, the asteroid in which they lived, and at once new visions whirled, dozens at once, until she cried out, (One at a time! Please!)

  The voices rumbled and debated, and then one voice said, (With me, for now.) There was a curious readjustment, and she found herself looking out through the eyes of an individual Talenki. Torrlllik, was the name she heard. Hi, Torrlllik. There was an odd warmth in the perception.

  She was peering through a hazy, reddish golden glow, into the interior of a chamber, where more Talenki were gathered than she could count; it was a scene out of a cubist painting, bodies merging and overlapping; and then the smell hit her, the richness and the moisture, and it was no smell she had ever encountered before. She knew without asking what this was; she had viewed it once before. The heart of our mind, they had called it. The center of the mind-net. The source.

  The Talenki were clustered around large bodies, shaped like toadstools, and she had seen those before, too; but now she perceived that, far from being inert, those bodies were living creatures, a vital part of the union. And somewhere, here, in this scene of quiet confusion . . .

  (Here live our memories,) said Torrlllik softly.

  And here she lived, as well. Her thoughts, her memories, her soul.

  * * *

  A hallway adorned with carved stone and hanging tapestries. Her host—Clnay'na, now—ran her fingers along the edge of the tapestry. It had a soft, ropelike texture; the colors were earthtones; its smell reminded her of tobacco.

  Walls shimmering and dissolving. Low-ceilinged rooms, Talenki dining or relaxing. Tended gardens, a glimpse only, stretching out of sight. Curiously shaped acoustical spaces, reverberating with music.

  Looking out of an older Talenki's eyes, Roto-something, a ledge overlooking a small meadow. A sense of oddly twisted geometry, nothing quite flat or straight. And then a surprise. Beside her and her host, silent and unobtrusive, another Talenki was carefully polishing an ungainly metallic object with wiry balloon wheels and shiny lenses. Something in her went cold and still, and she felt her host's breath stop, and for a frozen instant, she simply stared at the spacecraft's probe, sadness and fascination rising together to fill her thoughts. And then her host began breathing again, and she sighed, letting the pain go.

  It was now only a memorial, she thought. A piece of Earth's technology, a bit of her former home, former life. A memorial to a failed mission.

  (No—not failed!) Her host stamped its foot.

  She was startled by the voice—it had been more than one voice, many more. She had scarcely been conscious of her own thought. (But it did fail,) she said. (Unless you mean—well, I wouldn't be here, otherwise, I guess. Is that what you mean?)

  She sensed a flow of satisfaction, as her host turned away from the probe.

  * * *

  With the passage of time came a need for rest, and she blinked and found herself looking through the eyes of a young and cheerful Talenki named N'rrril. (To rest we will, in the center of our world,) he said, and stepped through a reddish lenslike wall, and emerged into a vast cavern.

  The salt smell touched her first, and then the sound of water hissing over sand, and the sight of the ocean—or if not an ocean, at least an impossibly large body of water. In the center of an asteroid? The water rippled in a gentle breeze and lapped at a narrow stretch of shoreline before them; but the surface of the sea curved away from the shore like an enormous billiard ball. Overhead, the ceiling of the cavern grew indistinct and bluish as it arched up and out over the water, and somewhere beyond the horizon a sun must have been shining, because both water and "sky" were brightly illuminated.

  An optical illusion? she wondered.

  N'rrril answered, (No illusion. The seas occupy the center of our world.)

  (Nine of them—) interrupted an eager voice. N'rrril hushed the other.

  (Nine seas?) she asked in disbelief.

  (Each, at its root, flowing down through arched passageways to the central wellspring,) said N'rrril.

  She felt an image: cupped basins radiating in multidimensional space, from a central cavity, all interconnected by honeycombed arches of stone. (This . . . wellspring. May we see it?)

  She felt a gentle laughter, the friendly laughter of a dozen Talenki. (Perhaps one day you will enter the soul of a sea creature,) N'rrril said. (Air does not reach to the center, where the dizzies live.)

  (Dizzies?)

  The other voices could not contain themselves. (The dizzies—) (—the deep nodes—) (—the source of what you call—) (—tachyons—)

  (Thank you,) N'rrril said to the others, w
ith a trace of grave humor. (The dizzies are . . . deep within our songs, they are a part of what drives us—)

  (—sustains us—) (—in our journey—)

  (They are creatures, these dizzies? Thinking beings?) Mozy asked. (You say . . . they are the source of your tachyons?) She was suddenly aware of a faint, low moaning sound radiating from the water. A sound like strained harps. Or whales.