AIs

by Gardner Dozois

  And the three of them, like birds hovering beneath the domed roof of a cathedral, ascended into the Empyrean.

  * * *

  They passed into a layer of darkness, like a storm cloud.

  The hemispheres of a 3-sphere—the Earth and its nested spheres, the globes of the angels—faded like stars at dawn. But Himmelfarb’s eyes glowed brightly.

  And then, space folded away.

  Philmus could still see Boyle, Himmelfarb, the priest’s shining eyes. But she couldn’t tell how near or far the others were. And when she tried to look away from them, her eyes slid over an elusive darkness, deeper than the darkness inside her own skull.

  There was no structure beyond the three of them, their relative positions. She felt as small as an electron, as huge as a galaxy. She felt lost.

  She clung to Himmelfarb’s hand. “Where are we? How far—”

  “We are outside the Primum Mobile: beyond duration, beyond the structure of space. Dante understood this place. ‘There near and far neither add nor subtract . . .’ You know, we underestimate Dante. The physicists are the worst. They see us all running around as Virtuals in the memory of some giant computer of the future. Not to mention the science fiction writers. Garbage. Dante understood that a soul is not a Virtual, and in the Paradiso, he was trying to express the transhuman experience of true eternity—”

  “What did he see?”

  Himmelfarb smiled. “Watch.”

  . . . Philmus saw light, like the image of God at the center of the angels’ spheres. It was a point, and yet it filled space and time. And then it unfolded, like a flower blooming, with particles and lines (world lines? quantum functions?) billowing out and rushing past her face, in an insubstantial breeze. Some of the lines tangled, and consciousness sparked—trapped in time, briefly shouting its joy at its moment of awareness—before dissipating once more. But still the unfolding continued, in a fourth, fifth, sixth direction, in ways she could somehow, if briefly, conceive.

  She felt a surge of joy. And there was something more, something just beyond her grasp—

  It was gone. She was suspended in the structureless void again. Himmelfarb grasped her hand.

  Boyle was curled over on himself, his eyes clamped closed.

  Philmus said, “I saw—”

  Himmelfarb said, “It doesn’t matter. We all see something different. And besides, it was only a Virtual shadow . . . What did you feel?”

  Philmus hesitated. “As I do when I solve a case. When the pieces come together.”

  Himmelfarb nodded. “Cognition. Scientists understand that. The ultimate cognition, knowing reality.”

  “But now it’s gone.” She felt desolate.

  “I know.” Himmelfarb’s grip tightened. “I’m sorry.”

  The Monsignor, his voice weak, murmured, “ ‘I saw gathered . . . / Bound up by love in a single volume / All the leaves scattered through the universe; / Substance and accidents and their relations, / But yet fused together in such a manner / That what I am talking about is a simple light.’ ”

  “Dante was very precise about how he interpreted what he saw,” said Himmelfarb. “This is Aristotelian physics. ‘Substances’ and ‘accidents’ describe phenomena and their relationships. I believe that Dante was trying to describe a glimpse of the unification of nature.”

  “Yes,” Philmus whispered.

  “And then he saw a paradox that he expressed by an image. Three circles, superimposed, of the same size—and yet of different colors.”

  “Separated by a higher dimension,” Philmus guessed.

  “Yes. In the high-dimensional artifact, Dante saw a metaphor for the Trinity. God’s three personalities in one being.”

  “Ah,” said the Monsignor, cautiously uncurling. “But you saw—”

  “Rather more. I knew enough physics—”

  “This is the basis of the new unified theory,” Philmus said. “A unification of phenomena through the structure of a higher-dimensional space.”

  Himmelfarb’s face was turning to pixels again. “It isn’t as simple as that,” she said. “The whole notion of dimensionality is an approximate one that only emerges in a semi-classical context—Well. I don’t suppose it matters now. I wrote it down as fast as I could, as far as I could remember it, as best I could express it. I don’t think I could give any more.”

  The Monsignor looked disappointed.

  Philmus said, “And then—”

  “I killed myself,” Himmelfarb said bluntly. Bathed in sourceless light, she seemed to withdraw from Philmus. “You have to understand. It wasn’t me. I had hoped to find enlightenment. But I was not enhanced. It was the organelles’ vision that leaked into my soul, and which I glimpsed.”

  “And that was what you could not bear,” the Monsignor said. Hanging like a toy in midair, he nodded complacently; evidently, Philmus thought, he had learned what he had come to find, and Himmelfarb’s essential untidiness—so distressing to Boyle’s bureaucrat’s heart—was gone. Now she was safely dead, her story closed.

  Philmus thought that over, and decided she would prosecute.

  But she also sensed that Boyle knew more than he was telling her. And besides . . . “I think you’re wrong, Monsignor.”

  Boyle raised his eyebrows. Himmelfarb hovered between them, saying nothing.

  “Eva didn’t quite finish showing us the last canto. Did you?”

  The priest closed her eyes. “After the vision of the multidimensional circle, Dante says, ‘That circle . . . / When my eyes examined it rather more / Within itself, and in its own color, / Seemed to be painted with our effigy . . .’ ”

  “I don’t understand,” the Monsignor admitted.

  Philmus said, “Dante saw a human face projected on his multidimensional artifact. He interpreted whatever he saw as the Incarnation: the embodiment of God—beyond time and space—in our time-bound mortal form. The final paradox of your Christian theology.”

  Boyle said, “So the ultimate vision of the universe is ourselves.”

  “No,” Himmelfarb snapped. “Today we would say that we—all minds—are the universe, which calls itself into existence through our observation of it.”

  “Ah.” Boyle nodded. “Mind is the ‘eternal light, existing in ourselves alone, / Alone knowing ourselves . . .’ I paraphrase. And this is what you saw, Eva?”

  “No,” said Philmus. She felt impatient; this insensitive asshole was supposed to be a priest, after all. “Don’t you see? This is what Himmelfarb believed her passengers, the sentient organelles, would see next; she had the guidance from Dante’s sketchy report for that. And that’s what she wanted to prevent.”

  “Yes.” Himmelfarb smiled distantly. “You are perceptive, officer. Are you sure you aren’t a Catholic?”

  “Not even lapsed.”

  Himmelfarb said, “You see, Dante’s quest did not end with discovering an answer, but with the end of questioning. He submitted himself to the order of the universe, so that his ‘desire and will / Were . . . turned like a wheel, all at one speed, / By the love which moves the sun and the other stars.’ ”

  Philmus said, “And that was the peace the organelles achieved, the peace you glimpsed. But you knew, or feared, you couldn’t follow.”

  “And so,” said Boyle, “you destroyed yourself—”

  “To destroy them. Yes.” Her expression was bitter. “Do you understand now, Monsignor? Of course, this is the end of your religion—of all religion. We are accidental structures, evanescent tied to time and doomed to oblivion. All our religious impulse, all our questing, all our visions—just a pale shadow of the organelles’ direct experience. They have God, Monsignor. All we have are Dante dreams.”

  Philmus said, “You were happy to be Dante. But—”

  “But I refused to see them go where I couldn’t follow. Yes, I could be Dante. But I couldn’t bear to be Virgil.”

  “I absolve you of your sin,” the Monsignor said abruptly, and he blessed Himmelfarb with a cross, shaped
by his right hand.

  Himmelfarb looked shocked—and then an expression of peace crossed her face, before light burst from within her, dazzling Philmus.

  When her eyes recovered, Philmus was embedded in space and time once more: alone with the Monsignor, in the sixteenth-century corridor, where the willow branches were merely painted.

  * * *

  Philmus met the Monsignor one more time, at the conclusion of the hearing in the New York UN building. The UN Commission had found against the Vatican, which would have to pay a significant fine.

  Boyle greeted Philmus civilly. “So our business is done.”

  “Do you feel we reached the truth, Monsignor?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know what to believe. The analysis of Eva’s monograph is continuing. The NASA people have taken up her suggestion of alternate evolutionary directions for macromolecules on Mars, and the exobiologists are modeling and proposing missions. We haven’t been able to recreate Eva’s lab results: to retrace her ‘footprints in Hell,’ as Dante would say. Perhaps it was all a fever dream of Eva’s, brought on by overwork and too much study. It wouldn’t be the first such incident in the Church’s long history.” He paused thoughtfully. “Or perhaps we are indeed hosts to another sentience. Perhaps, one day, it will awaken fully. If it does, I hope it will treat us with compassion. And what do you believe, Officer Philmus?”

  I believe that whatever the Vatican finds, whatever it knows, it will keep to itself, in the Secret Archive. “I’m reading Dante.” It was true.

  The Monsignor smiled. “But you hate poetry.”

  “It’s the only place I can think of where I might find the answers. Anyhow, it’s something to do in the small hours of the night. Better than—”

  He said softly, “Yes.”

  “Better than to lie there listening to my body. Wondering who else is home.”

  He whispered, “Dante dreams? You too?”

  “Monsignor—you realize that if Eva was right, she achieved first contact.”

  His face was calculating, but not without sympathy. “The Vatican is very old, officer. Old, and secretive. And—though without the tools of modern science—we have been investigating these issues for a very long time.”

  She felt her pulse hammer. “What does that mean?”

  “There are many ways to God. Perhaps Eva indeed made contact. But—the first?”

  He smiled, turned, and walked away.

  Author’s Note: A reference to Dante’s 4-dimensional geometry can be found in “Dante and the 3-sphere,” Mark Peterson, American Journal of Physics, vol. 47, pp. 1031-1035, 1979.

  The Names of All the Spirits

  J.R. Dunn

  Here, set against the background of an isolated factory in deep space, is a taut, suspenseful story that takes us to a troubled future where humans and A.I.s fear and shun each other, and shows us that vital first step with which even the longest and most difficult of journeys toward reconciliation must begin . . .

  A former political reporter, J.R. Dunn has made sales to Sci Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Omni, Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other markets. His books include This Side of Judgment.

  * * *

  It was a busier sky than I was used to. The stars were invisible, outshone by an apparently solid tower of light dominating the view out the window. It was about as wide as an outstretched hand, narrowing steadily to a point high enough to make me tilt my head before twisting into a curve and vanishing from sight. Or perhaps not completely so: obscured by a fog of leakage, a thin filament that might be its distant tail extended into a darkness not quite the absolute black of space. At eye level another stream flowed off at a right angle, pure white to the tower’s mottled yellow, ending in a sunburst bright enough to make me squint. It was all very impressive, an undertaking of a scale you don’t often find inside the system, almost astronomical in both scope and imagery. And I was impressed, on the intellectual, so-many-megatons-per-second level. But nothing more. Similar operations were going on all across this lobe of the cometary halo. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all. I’ve seen one.

  Somebody Solward needed ice cubes. That’s what it came down to. Those two streams were stripped comets, hydrocarbons separated from volatiles and each sent off in different directions, to freeze again in the cold of extrasolar space. The ice would be shipped in while the hydrocarbons and solids remained. They wouldn’t go far, not as we judge distances these days, and somebody, someday in the fullness of time, would find a use for them.

  A rustle of impatience recalled me to the room. The window reflected the scene behind me: a dozen or so figures in a motley array of gear centered on a man perched on a small chair. One of them seemed to have grown a second head directly atop his first in the time my back had been turned. I realized it was a piece of scrim resting on a shelf behind him. Not even jacks are that weird.

  I turned to the seated man. Through some means I couldn’t detect (the place wasn’t spinning, that much was certain), they’d created a one-gee field. If meant as a courtesy, it was misplaced—I’d been out in Kuiper-Oort as long as any of them. “Let’s hear your side, Morgan. That’s what I came for.”

  The only sound was a voice muttering, “. . . n’t have a side.”

  Morgan himself simply stared, saying nothing, the same as he had the first two times I’d asked the question. He could well have been tranced, lost in a private world or daydream, though some small tremor of attention told me he was not

  I’d thought it was going to be easy. Open and shut, as the ancient phrase went. Get the story out of Morgan, lase it in, take him into custody and back to the System by the swiftest means possible, without even waiting for a reply. They’d given me the impression he’d talked, which was obviously not the case. I shouldn’t have questioned him in front of them. A single glance at this crew—Morgan’s workmates, the “Powder Monkeys,” of all conceivable names—was enough to strike terror into a sponge.

  But I didn’t think it was fear holding Morgan back. It was something else. Something I was going to get at, however deep I had to go. Because this was no mere legal matter, and Rog Morgan was not simply a jack in trouble. This was an impi problem, and Morgan was my ticket home.

  I saw no point in any more questions. I turned to Witcove. “You’ve got a secure spot for him?”

  “He ain’t going no place, Sandoval.” Witcove snorted. “We got his processor and remotes.”

  I raised a hand. “Why don’t you give me those.”

  Witcove frowned. He hadn’t quite worked out how to handle me yet. Who was I, after all, but one man come out of the dark? What gave me the right to throw my mass around? Where did I get off giving orders to the foreman of the Powder Monkeys?

  Mystique came to my rescue. Back on the Blue Rock, at a time when Texas was—in the mind’s system of measurement, anyway—only marginally smaller than the Halo, there existed an organization with a mission not at all unlike the Mandate’s and the motto, “One riot, one Ranger.” A single Texas Ranger could be relied on to ride into any given bad town and straighten the place out with only his two hands and the sure knowledge that hundreds just like him were ready to saddle up. It seldom failed.

  It didn’t fail now. With a grunt, Witcove reached into a thigh pouch and pulled out what appeared to be a handful of black geometrical solids of various sizes. Forgetting we were under gee, he made as if to toss them to me, curtailing the throw at the very last second as the thought occurred to him. He succeeded only in scattering components across the floor between us.

  That triggered the kind of laughter you’d expect, along with the first visible reaction from Morgan as he gazed at the components with an expression mixing frustration and annoyance. Somebody was living behind that vacuum-habituated mask after all.

  At my feet the scattered remotes began to move, sliding together to form a little pile. Witcove swung on Morgan with a wordless roar.

  The compon
ents went still. With a sigh of impatience Morgan looked away. “Once more, mister,” Witcove told him. “You issue one more command and I will personally—”

  “Foreman . . .” Witcove raised his eyebrows. Someone stepped forward to collect the remotes and hand them to me. I was absently thanking him when I felt a burst of heat in my palm. The jack kept his eyes lowered. “Foreman, can we break things up for the moment?”

  “Sure, you . . . got enough for now?”

  “I do.”

  Behind him two crewmen hustled Morgan to his feet and out the exit. I moved off, pretending interest in the scrim collection. Scrim is the vacuum jack’s one notable hobby, dignified as art by some. Small carvings comprised of asteroidal junk, scrap, what have you, of a size easily carried in a suit pouch and worked on at odd moments with atelier remotes and occasionally heavier machinery. Scrim touches every subject matter conceivable: women, ships, animals, vehicles, instruments, self-portraits, and items not easily catalogued. It wasn’t crude. They worked on it too long for that, almost obsessively, often overshooting the baroque to land deep in the grotesque. I didn’t care for scrim. It spoke to me only of loneliness and exile.

  Witcove sidled up next to me. “You come to a decision, you’ll . . .”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  That wasn’t precisely what he wanted to hear. “Look . . .” He glanced behind him. Morgan had vanished. “He’s not gonna tell you anything. It’s locked up. Something wrong there. When the runaways grab a guy—”

  “Shift change in five,” somebody said. The room began clearing. I gestured at Witcove, half-thanks, half-dismissal.

  “I’ll let you know,” I repeated.

  Clearly dissatisfied, he walked off. A crewman intercepted him to talk operations. With a final glance in my direction, Witcove left.

  The room empty at last, I reached into my pocket. The components made a handful. The big one, an inch and a half by two, had to be the processor, a lifetime of experience and training imbedded within it. I wondered what Witcove would do if somebody abused his. The other nine were remote sensors, appendages, actuators, the vacuum jack’s tools of the trade. With these, a jack could see into the infrared and radio ranges, expand his sensory horizon a hundred or a thousand miles, control instruments and machinery that far away and more. I examined one resembling a length of thick wire. A jack would be able to tell exactly what make it was, its capabilities, its cost. Hard to believe that zero-gee work was once done with tools held in gloved hands . . .