by Neal Asher
He had never given deep consideration to the differences between humans of his time and theirs, except insofar as he had to plan for their needs. Even with all the accoutrements and additions and manipulations of his time, the similarities far outweighed the differences.
Yates crossed the smooth green carpet of lawn to the scaffold. His face was grim.
"Our time is limited," he picted to Olmy. "The defense station at one point nine ex nine says it's detecting excessive flaw radiation. The Jarts could be preparing to open a new, very large gate."
"Gate to a star's heart?" Olmy asked.
"That's the supposition. Station personnel are preparing to pull back."
The idea had been discussed in upper-level defense circles for decades. It was simple, if drastic: the Way at many points touched on stellar bodies. Since the Way was essentially a hollow, evacuated tube, opening a circuit of massive gates into the heart of a star would suck up the high-pressure, superheated plasma and distribute it throughout the
Way. Barriers—though constructed of modified Way space-time—would transmit the extreme heat and finally break down, becoming level with the walls. The Way itself would remain intact, but everything else for billions of kilometers would simply dissolve to component particles in the fury.
"How fast would the plasma front travel?" Olmy asked.
"It would only be slowed by turbulence effects. Its final velocity could be about six thousand kilometers per second."
"Then we'd have about thirty-two hours to evacuate."
"If they can't open a gate remotely..."
The thought of the Jarts' being able to manipulate Way gates from a distance had sobered defense planners for years. The Jarts had never demonstrated such a capability within the human-controlled sector, but data from Way disturbances had led many gate researchers—including Ry Oyu's team—to believe they were doing so beyond 2 ex 9.
"I've passed word on to Senator Oyu," Yates continued. "Her father is with his researchers now. She'll tell him when he's available."
Olmy saw Patricia and Lanier emerge from the cubicle in the living quarters on the north side of the terminal shell.
"Will Ser Vasquez agree, do you think?" Yates asked. "You've spent much more time with our guests than I."
Olmy picted a symbol of uncertainty, carrying implications of resigned humor: an incomplete neomorph choosing between two high-fashion body designs.
"I wish I had your calm," Yates said. "I could use a Talsit session right now."
Patricia spotted Olmy and Yates and waved at them, then touched Lanier's shoulder. Both crossed the grass toward the scaffold.
"I have to see Ser Oyu," she told Olmy. Lanier seemed haggard, his eyes darting back and forth.
"He's in conference with his researchers. Senator Oyu will relay any message," Yates told her.
"Well, I suppose I don't have to tell him in particular. Olmy..."
Lanier focused on Olmy, his expression unhappy and resentful.
"I've decided. I'll make the bargain."
Olmy smiled. "When would be convenient?" he asked.
"Our time is limited," Yates said.
Patricia shrugged. "I suppose now is fine. Any time."
"I'll hold you personally responsible," Lanier said to Olmy, emphatically jabbing his finger at him.
"I take the responsibility," Olmy said solemnly. "She will be protected."
Yates went to inform Senator Oyu that they were about to begin. Olmy led them to the unfinished cupola where they had first met Ry Oyu, and picted instructions to a monitor floating nearby. "It will summon a medical worker. I'll make a few modifications in the worker and transfer the partials. You will then offer your Mystery and the patterns will be conformed. It's quite simple."
"If it works, it's a goddamned miracle," Lanier said under his breath, "and you say it's simple."
" 'Lazarus come forth,' from your perspective, correct?" Olmy asked, hoping to amuse him.
"Don't patronize us," Lanier said. The man's anger was obviously building. Olmy thought he could understand why. Now that Patricia had made her decision, Lanier was cut out of the process. He was simply an appendage. Patricia had obviously ignored his misgivings.
The medical worker—an upright, elongated egg-shaped device about a meter tall, delineated with purple to show where manipulators and other instruments would emerge—approached them, floating a few centimeters above the grass.
Olmy picted modifying instructions and the worker extended a small cup-shape at the end of a thick metallic gray cable. He placed the cup below his ear and closed his eyes. Patricia watched, eyes wide, crossing and uncrossing the fingers of both hands. Her calmness seemed artificial now. Lanier's stomach knotted.
Prescient Oyu and her father joined them just as Olmy removed the cup. They said nothing, standing a few meters away to watch.
The medical worker moved closer to Patricia. A traction field spread out into a kind of cot before it, and Olmy asked her to lie down. She complied. The worker then spread a fan of black cables around her head like a hairnet.
The net adjusted itself, squeezing her hair. Patricia reached up to feel it. "I should never go out in public with this thing on," she joked.
Lanier knelt beside the cot and took her hand. "Just a couple of Hottentots," he said. "Blowing in the wind."
Patricia made a face, then rolled her head to look at Olmy. "I'm ready," she said.
"There's no pain, no sensation whatsoever," Olmy said.
"Well, whatever, I'm ready." She pressed Lanier's hand and released it. He stepped back.
The net tightened, and she winced at the pressure, not painful but strong nevertheless. Lanier winced in sympathy but did not move. Prescient Oyu walked to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"She carries a part of our dream," the senator said. "Do not worry." Lanier squinted at her.
Patricia seemed to be concentrating, her eyes barely closed. Lanier felt a sick kind of fascination. There was no sound, nothing overt whatsoever, simply the transfer of whatever they were borrowing from her, copying.
She opened her eyes and turned her head toward him.
The net withdrew.
"I'm okay," she said, sitting up on the field. "I don't feel any different."
"The combination will take a few hours to mature," Olmy said. "Then Korzenowski should be with us again."
"Will he have a body?" Lanier asked. Patricia stood by him.
"He'll occupy the worker until one can be made," Olmy said. "He can project an image of himself, however. That would be one sign of his complete reconstruction."
Patricia took Lanier's hand in hers again and squeezed it firmly. "Thank you," she said.
"Thanks for what, for Christ's sake?"
"For being brave," she said.
Lanier stared at her in complete amazement.
Patricia, Lanier and Olmy followed the medical worker to the quarters where they had spent the night. Olmy judged it would be best if Korzenowski's first perceptions were in reasonably familiar surroundings—a normal room, sparsely decorated and without too many people—or nonhumans. Ry Oyu and Yates agreed. "Besides," the gate opener said, "you've been waiting for this moment for five centuries. It's your moment much more than ours."
In the quarters, they waited for fifteen minutes before Olmy prompted the worker to display an image showing the progress of the personality it contained. Patricia raised her hand to her mouth as the image manifested before them.
The image was grossly distorted, one-half of the body large and bulbous, the other small almost to vanishing. Its apparent solidity was imperfect, with some parts opaque and others transparent. Its color was predominantly blue. The elongated, side-slipping head seemed to watch them, turning from face to face.
"Don't be disturbed," Olmy warned them. "The awareness of body shape is the last thing to mature."
Across a period of minutes, almost imperceptibly, the distortions corrected themselves. The overall blue
color became more natural, and the patches of translucency filled in.
When the adjustments were completed, Korzenowski's image was fully and accurately formed, Olmy noted with satisfaction. It matched the appearance the Engineer had once chosen for the official portrait miniatures: a slender, dark-haired man of medium height, with a sharp, long nose and inquisitive, humored black eyes, his skin colored light
coffee.
Olmy still searched for deviations. The Mystery imposed upon the partials, however close to Korzenowski's original,
was not exact. However, it was sufficient to return Korzenowski to full awareness, and that awareness would be patterned by the virtually complete memories of the partials to reproduce closely the personality that had been erased—assassinated—before Olmy was born.
"Welcome," Olmy said aloud.
The image regarded him steadily, then attempted to speak. Its lips moved, but produced no sound. The image wavered abruptly, and when it was solid again, said, "I know you. I feel much better—very different. Have I been reconstructed?"
"As best we can manage," Olmy said.
"I remember so little—like bad dreams. You were a child ... when we first met."
Olmy felt the rise of another emotion that Ram Kikura might have regarded as atavistic. "A boy, five years old," he said. He clearly remembered first seeing the Engineer's partials in the apartment memory, remembered his child-self frightened and fascinated at meeting someone famous—and dead.
"How long have I been incomplete, dead, whatever I was?"
"Five centuries," Olmy said.
The Engineer's expletive would have been extremely crude in his day; for Olmy, now, it was archaic and quaint. "Why was I brought back? Surely everyone was better off without me."
"Oh, no," Olmy said sincerely. "We are honored to bring you back."
"I must be completely out of date."
"We can correct that in a few hours."
"I don't feel ... finished. Why is that?"
"You have to mature. Your reconstruction is still finding its pathways. You don't have your own body. You're occupying a medical worker."
Again the expletive, even stronger. "I am behind the times. Only a mental midget could have fit into the most advanced worker..." The image tilted its head forward, regarding Olmy from beneath its brows, eyes questioning. "I was damaged, wasn't I?"
"Yes," Olmy said.
"What's missing?"
"The Mystery. We had to work from partials only."
"Whose Mystery replaced it?"
Olmy pointed to Patricia.
"Thank you," Korzenowski said after a moment of thoughtful silence.
"You're welcome," Patricia said lamely.
"You look familiar ... I've seen you before."
"This is Patricia Luisa Vasquez," Olmy said.
Korzenowski's expression was at first incredulous. The image extended its hand to Patricia. Patricia grabbed the hand, no longer surprised by the solidity and warmth of projections.
"The Patricia Luisa Vasquez?"
"One and only," Patricia replied.
Korzenowski's image leaned its head back, grimacing. "I have an awful lot to catch up on." He released her hand, apologizing under his breath. He took Lanier's outstretched hand and shook it more briefly, his grip firm but not insistent.
Lanier was more than a little awed to meet the man who had designed the corridor. "I have a small ... I don't know what it is, statue, hologram, whatever, of you. Back in my desk. You've been a puzzle to me for years..." He realized he was babbling. "We're from Earth," he concluded abruptly.
Korzenowski's face was unreadable. "Where are we?" he asked.
"In the Way, at one point three ex nine," Olmy replied.
"Where is the Thistledown?"
"In orbit around the Earth and Moon."
"What year?"
"2005," Patricia said.
"That's Journey year?" Korzenowski asked hopefully.
"Anno Domini," Olmy said.
The Engineer suddenly looked very tired. "How long before you can educate me?"
"We can start now, even before your personality is mature. Is that what you wish?"
"I think we'd better, don't you?" Turning to Patricia again, he said, "You're very young. How much work have you done ... how many of your papers?"
"None of my most important ones," she replied.
"This is not something I anticipated ... It is not an obvious result of our work. I mean to say, how could I have missed it? And you must tell me how you got here ... and why you?"
Even before Olmy could arrange for the update of information, Patricia and the Engineer were deeper in discussion.
Within four hours, the researchers, representing seven of the species that utilized the corridor, had gathered around the scaffold. Each of these species had demonstrated its usefulness to the human patrons, though by no means their subservience; they were full partners in the venture of the Way, and they came in a wide variety of forms—though not necessarily much wider a variety than the neomorphs of the Axis City, Lanier thought.
There were three Frants, cloaked in the shiny foil jackets that seemed to be their usual clothing away from Timbl. A being shaped like two upside-down U's connected with a thick, gnarled rope of flesh—lacking visible eyes, its skin as smooth and featureless as black giass—stood unmoving on its four elephantine feet a few meters from the Frant,
surrounded by a red line of quarantine. It apparently did not find the atmosphere uncomfortable, however.
A Talsit researcher stood on its eight limbs beside Yates on the north side of the scaffold, surrounded by a traction bubble containing its particular mix of atmosphere—very little oxygen, with a much higher percentage of carbon dioxide, at temperatures low enough to make condensation form on the field's flexible boundaries. Its mossy "antlers" were in constant motion. All the other nonhuman researchers were surrounded by similar fields, the most striking being a sinuous, snake-bodied, four-headed being suspended in coils in a levitated sphere of deep green liquid, like a preserved specimen.
From the evidence, human-form beings were not common.
Before the gathering, Lanier and the Talsit had engaged in a strange conversation—strange in its clarity and uncanny familiarity, as if they had been no stranger to each other than new neighbors at a block party.
The Talsit had stood on the north side of the scaffolding, conversing with a Frant while a second Frant waited silently nearby. The Franks had homogenized several hours before; there was little need for the second Frant to contribute to the conversation, unless parallel thinking was required. Lanier and Patricia had eaten as much from a bountiful floating lunch table as they cared to. Patricia had then gone off with Olmy to resume her conversation with Korzenowski.
Lanier found himself speaking with the Talsit almost by default. The Talsit had approached Prescient Oyu to discuss her father's plans for the ceremony's aftermath. Their conversation had been picted at first, and then she had shifted to English, introducing the Talsit to Lanier. The Talsit spoke perfect English, though nothing moved anywhere on its body in any way to show sound production.
Lanier didn't even bother to be curious; he had had a surfeit of marvels, minor and major. It took his full attention just finding the right words t explain how they had come to be here. In conversation with a being not even remotely human in shape, and of unknown psychological character (if it could speak perfect English, surely it could also provide a screen for its real thought processes), he talked casually enough about the Death, about alternate universes and
invasions in space. The Talsit, in turn, discussed its own kind. Lanier found himself nodding in understanding to a story that would have been incomprehensible to him only a few short months ago.
The beings called Talsit were offshoots of a unified biological-mechanical intelligence that had once occupied the fourteen planets of a very old solar system. At one point, the intelligence had been entirely stored in memory banks, wit
h no physically manifested individuals—not unlike the Axis City Memory. But gradually the intelligence had broken down into individuals—a condensation of consciousness within the system—and the individuals had created new forms for their physical manifestation. These had been the parent species of the Talsit. The parent species, this Talsit seemed to imply, still existed, but were introverted and isolationist; they had created the Talsit to act as mercantile representatives, consultants to younger civilizations. A circuit of gates happened to open onto one of their worlds, and they had begun trading, first with the Jarts who had opened the gates, and then with humans after the Jarts had been pushed back.