by Neal Asher
By implication, the Talsit and their ancestral forms were at least a hundred times older than humanity.
"Then why even bother communicating with us?" Lanier asked.
"Consider it a hobby of one's old age, or senility," the Talsit said, without a hint of condescension or dissembling. "My kind have services—particularly regarding the cleansing and reordering of information—which humans and others find invaluable. It pleases us to be useful, and in turn we acquire information of great value to us."
The call to the ceremony came a few minutes later, one of the Frants ringing a high-pitched, sweet sounding bell hung from a bar on the south side of the scaffold.
Lanier stood at parade rest, hands behind his back, next to Korzenowski's image and Prescient Oyu, while Patricia took a position of honor between Yates and Ry Oyu.
Ry Oyu's ceremonial clothes were simple, consisting of rough white cloth shirt and black pants. He wore black cloth slippers. Yates wore a forest-green robe, showing some signs of wear.
Ry Oyu stepped to the stairs that curved over the top of the rounded scaffold. He stood for a moment, head bowed, and then beckoned for Patricia to follow.
"You must learn this," Ry Oyu said to Patricia at the top of the scaffold. "The clavicle can tell you where a gate is to be opened, but only in part; you must also sense the point, and tune it to that desired world. There is as much of what you would call intuition as calculation."
He bent down and gripped the handles of the clavicle, removing it from its holder at the center of the radiance of traction lines. Patricia stared down and became dizzy; the top of the scaffold was at least sixty meters from the pit bottom.
"And there is also ritual. It tunes the mind," the gate opener said. "It prepares. It may not be strictly necessary, but I've always found it useful. Now." He held out the clavicle and closed his eyes. "We're not looking for the usual game today. I've been seeking this junction for fifty years at least, and until now, it's always eluded me." He opened one eye and gave her a querying half-smile. "You've been wondering why we're still here, opening another gate that we must inevitably close when the Jarts come or the Axis City passes over. Haven't you been wondering?"
Patricia nodded.
"Because whatever our disloyalty to the present Geshel rulers, I remain faithful to the Hexamon. I will serve the Hexamon even if they believe I'm a traitor, as they must if they know the role I've played in the secession. So to redeem myself, I open this gate."
"I still don't understand," Patricia said, head cocked to one side, eyes on the clavicle.
Ry Oyu removed one hand and spread his fingers, swinging his arm to indicate a circle. "All gates have been tuned to open onto worlds, planets. The Way passes an infinity of possible junctions with other worlds, and we must choose from a large subset of that infinity when we tune at each optimum point. You've noticed, perhaps, that our gates are always spaced at distances no less than four hundred kilometers. That's because of the rhythm of the geometry stacks. Do you understand that rhythm?"
Patricia nodded. "Yes."
"We do not venture into the stacks themselves. They commingle alternate universes and timelines in a way not useful to us. We work between." He axed the air with the edge of his hand. "We work within a range of ten meters, and within that range, there are perhaps a billion vantages. We tune as closely as we can to the location of an object with planetary mass; the clavicle tells us the mass by picting directly to our minds, giving us all the necessary information. Feel this." He took her hand and placed it on the opposite grip of the clavicle. Her mind was flooded with images, information. "Now look at me."
She stared at Ry Oyu, and into her head he picted a rapid, steady flow of techniques. "It would be much easier if you had an implant, but at least you have the inclination—and the motivation to learn. I cannot give you all the skill, but I can help you hone your intuition." He delivered another series of instructions. Hand still on the clavicle, she felt the flows of data merge.
"I can't help you find your way home," he said, tapping her hand to get her to remove it from the grip. "I won't be with you, and neither will Yates or Olmy. We all have business to attend to. But if your theory is correct—and I see no reason why it shouldn't be—then you can find the proper gate within the geometry stack. You have sufficient
knowledge for the attempt. Now watch carefully. We do not open onto another world today. We open onto the Way itself."
Patricia frowned.
"You've seen the curve, Patricia; I'm sure you've calculated the curve of the Way."
"Yes," she said.
"Have you seen where it crosses itself?"
"No."
"It's a very subtle crossing, and the points are far-separated. At such distances, the Way's character may be very different.
"The Axis City will eventually reach those sectors in its travels, perhaps in millions of years, much sooner if the Geshels carry out their present plans. When we open the gate at this junction, we will know what the Way actually is, what we have created and perhaps how extensive it is. We redeem ourselves to the Hexamon by pioneering. Now do you understand why we have stayed here?"
Patricia nodded.
Ry Oyu turned to the researchers and his colleagues at the base of the scaffold. "Is the Engineer ready to witness?"
"I am here."
"Can you experience everything clearly?"
"Yes. I think so."
The gate opener took a deep breath and glanced sidewise at Patricia. "Today, we are all privileged," he said to her.
The clavicle hummed as he stepped down onto the traction field. He beckoned for Patricia to accompany him. She stood on the lines beside him, and the field dimpled downward where they stood, forming a cup around them. They were within a few meters of the floor of the pit when they stopped their descent. Ry Oyu kneeled and replaced the
clavicle in its holder. "I've narrowed the region down to a few centimeters," he said.
Lifting his head, to Patricia's surprise he began to chant.
"In the name of Star, furnace of our being, forge of our substance, greatest of all fires, Star give us light, give us even in darkness the gift of right creation."
He adjusted the clavicle and gripped it tightly with both hands, closing his eyes and lifting his face to the heights of the terminal shell.
"In Fate we lay our trust, in the Way of Life and Light, in ultimate destiny's pattern, which we cannot deny, whatever we choose, however freely we choose.
"In the name of Pneuma, breath of our minds, wind of our thoughts, born of flesh or carried in machine, guide our hands, enthuse us, that we may create in truth ourselves, that we may manifest what is within, without."
Lanier saw Korzenowski's image mouthing the words along with Ry Oyu. Had the Engineer written the ceremony the gate opener now used?
The clavicle's hum rose in pitch. Patricia clenched her hands together in front of her, realizing that she was making a gesture of prayer. She could not persuade herself to untangle her fingers and put her hands to her sides.
"And in the name of the Eld, some of whom are with us this occasion, those born of flesh and those resurrected by the gifts of our past creativity; in the name of those who burned that we might find a truer path, who suffered the Death that we may live..."
Both Patricia and Lanier felt tears brim over and spill down their cheeks.
"I lift this clavicle to worlds without number, and bring a new light to the Way, opening this gate that all may prosper, those who guide and are guided, who create and are created, who light the Way and bask in the light so given."
He brought the clavicle out of its field receptacle and lifted it between his knees. The stream of picts issuing from the clavicle lit up his face with a fire-like intensity. The humming had passed out of range of hearing.
"Behold."
"I open a—new world..."
The bronze surface of the Way beneath them seemed to degenerate into a crosshatching of black and green and
red lines. Ry Oyu stood, keeping the clavicle level in his hands.
At the edge of the pit, standing as close as they could to the scaffold, the researchers, Yates, Prescient Oyu, Lanier and the image of Korzenowski stared down into the silent storm of the gate's beginning.
The traction cup lifted the gate opener and Patricia a few meters. Patricia became dizzy again, staring into the pregnant, whirling illusion of color and infinite possibility.
The illusion parted, an oily black circle forming at the center.
Ry Oyu handed the clavicle to Patricia. She took its grips firmly in her hands.
"Now feel the power of what is happening," he said in English. "Learn the sensation of a correct opening."
The clavicle was alive in her hands, part of her, connected with her by its constant picting. Ry Oyu's instructions to her had been quite detailed and were now fixed in her head.
The power was exhilarating. She felt like laughing as the clavicle broadened the hole in the surface of the Way. Overhead, the incomplete cupola that had sheltered Ry Oyu's work area now moved into position on its own, seeking the center of the disturbance.
"This is a dangerous time," Ry Oyu said to her. "If it gets out of control, the cupola encloses us and smooths out the disturbance. If that happens, we are forever lost to the Way. We go wherever the aborted gate takes us, and we cannot come back. Do you feel that potential?"
She did. Her exhilaration changed into a sensation of having something indescribably nasty and unfriendly by the tail. She kept her eyes on the clavicle.
"That's it," Ry Oyu said. "Olmy could not have been more correct. You're more of our time than your own."
The cupola's sketchy, racing lines shrank into the familiar active bronze coloration they had seen at other gate sites. At the center of the pit, the vortex surrounding the black circle began to rise, and the traction field carried them higher still.
"Follow me," Yates told Lanier as the researchers moved outward. They regrouped about fifty meters from the scaffold, near the site of the gate opener's work area. The ground around the pit was buckling, breaking up and forming a tumulus over the rising slope of the gate.
The scaffold and traction lines remained level. Ry Oyu resumed his grip on the clavicle. "A hundred thousand possibilities here," he murmured. "Through the clavicle, I can feel them ... experience them. I learn about a hundred thousand worlds now, but I only want one. I listen for it ... I know its character ... I know the particular tangent it occupies. The clavicle controls its own probing, keeping its position steady, but I direct ... And find."
His expression was exalted, triumphant. The oily black circle widened and became an intense cerulean blue. Around the circle, the bronze Way material again took on definition, forming a smooth-lipped depression with the blueness at its center. The depression deepened; Patricia could not avoid characterizing the process as space-time healing, growing accustomed to the unnatural intrusion.
Around the circumference of the blueness, she received a camera-obscure, fish-eye-lens view of something long, bright and flowing, surrounded by massive dark objects.
"The gate is opened," Ry Oyu said, shoulders slumping. He slipped the clavicle into its receptacle and stretched out his
arms. "Now we find out what lies on the other side."
"Do we enter?" Patricia asked.
"No," the gate opener said with a hint of amusement. "We send one of our mechanical friends. It makes its report, and we make our decision without immediately risking our lives."
The traction field cup brought them level with the steps at the top of the scaffold. Ry Oyu motioned for Patricia to precede him, and they joined the others near the work area.
A cubic monitor about half a meter on a side—large for such devices—floated up the new slope and passed through the bars of the scaffold. It slipped quietly into the depression and through the gate. Yates activated a pictor and tuned it to the monitor's signals, relayed by scaffold transponders.
To Lanier, Patricia's stature seemed to have increased. She appeared more self-assured, calm. Taking his hand and squeezing it between both of hers, she smiled at him and whispered, "I can do it. I felt it. I'll be able to follow through."
The monitor image had not yet come into focus. Yates translated picts carrying information about the conditions on the other side. "The monitor is in a high vacuum," he said, "with a very low radiation count. If we are indeed in another section of the Way, the flaw is particularly inactive and stable."
"There doesn't seem to be any flaw," Ry Oyu commented, squinting in concentration.
The visual image clarified.
"It's enormous," Senator Oyu said quietly.
At whatever point the gate had intersected the Way, the tube-shaped universe had expanded to a diameter of at least fifty thousand kilometers. "Geodesic drift," Patricia said.
"Well, that might account for it," Ry Oyu said. "But it may not be inherent."
Lanier didn't bother asking for an explanation; he doubted he could absorb it.
The Way was filled with cyclopean structures, dark crystalline masses thousands of kilometers long, some floating free, casting broad shadows against the opposite walls of the Way as they passed before an intense, meandering, snake-like plasma tube.
"Surface attraction is about one-tenth g," Yates said. "The parameters are substantially different, Ry. Do you suppose it's another Way, not our own?"
"Do we have reason to believe anyone else would have made a universe like this one?" the gate opener asked.
"No," Yates admitted.
"We imposed our own heritage on the shape of the Way when we made it cylindrical—I strongly doubt others would duplicate it. Not with the endless possibilities available."
"Still, there's a convenience to such a shape, a practicality if commerce is desired..."
Ry Oyu agreed to that much with a curt nod. He seemed angry, surveying the results of his work. "It's very strange
there," he said. "No detectable flaw, and the plasma tube is highly irregular. I'd say it's been tampered with."
"By Jarts?"
"No," the gate opener said. "Those structures are very un-Jart-like. I'm not sure I can conceive any practical uses for them—they're either distortions in the geometry, space-time extrusions and crystallizations, or..." He shook his head. "Or they're beyond our comprehension. And besides, I doubt very much if Jarts could have progressed so far. This junction—if it is a junction—has to be beyond one ex fifteen—over a hundred light years down the Way."
"There can't he any gates there, then," Patricia said.
Yates raised his eyebrows. "Why not?"
"Because that's beyond the end of our universe, in time. Gates would open onto..." She held up her hands. "Nothing. Null."
"Not necessarily," Ry Oyu said. "But you have an interesting point. The Way is adapted to fit conditions in its epoch of origin. Where it surpasses those conditions—extends beyond them—it may naturally reach other accommodations."
"Can the Axis City ever travel that far?" Prescient Oyu asked.
"I don't know. If the flaw ceases to exist, they would have to make adjustments ... it would be difficult. And if there's no flaw beyond a certain point—"
"The Way is self-sustaining," Yates finished for him.
"It is indeed. It doesn't require sixth chamber machinery or any connection with the Thistledown."
"It looks empty," Lanier said, unsure he should enter into the discussion. "I don't see any traffic—there's no movement."
Yates instructed the monitor to survey the region. The images became greatly magnified, revealing the cyclopean crystals in more detail. The Way was filled with them—some soaring from one side to the other across tens of thousands of kilometers, the plasma tube curving around them.
All of the structures—even those floating free—were covered with cupola-like disks, each protecting the obvious blisters of open gates. The image magnified several more times. Shimmering strands of light passed in
thick nets between the densely packed gates. There was traffic-commerce of some sort—but on an inconceivably vast scale, and of a different kind than they had ever witnessed.
More picts flashed beside the images. "Definitely no flaw," Yates affirmed. "The Way at this point is completely stable and self-consistent."
Patricia appeared half-asleep. She was in the state again, Lanier realized. She was struggling to understand what was happening—it was completely beyond him.