“Relays are sweeping the message through the Snake,” Julian said next to him, “so he’s bound to pick it up.”
“Why should he bother?” Kurbi said.
“He’ll talk to you, I’m hoping.”
What can I say? Kurbi asked himself. Shall I plead with him?
“I’m here, Kurbi,” a metallic voice said over the chatter of the screens.
Poincaré raised a hand. All other receptions were blacked out.
Myraa appeared on the main screen. Her eyes were open, but she was looking inward.
Gorgias’s voice came from the cabin, not from her mouth. “You’ve come to beg. Spare yourself the humiliation. I will destroy you along with your world and its sun.”
“Would you prefer to take me prisoner?” Kurbi asked.
Gorgias laughed. It sounded like a slow drumbeat on metal.
“What would change your mind?” Kurbi asked.
“Nothing. You know that.”
“There must be something we could give you. Name it.”
Gorgias laughed again. “But you’re about to give me everything!”
“What will you gain?” Poincaré asked.
“The satisfaction of existing in a universe without you and your kind.”
“We should have destroyed Myraa’s World,” Julian whispered.
Gorgias heard him. “But you didn’t, and now it’s too late to threaten me. You hesitated because you weigh gains and losses. You can never understand the beautiful simplicity of absolute power, of not having to measure advantages.”
“It takes no brains to be a glutton,” Poincaré said.
Myraa’s eyes blinked and closed.
Gorgias laughed faintly. “What do you hope to gain by provoking me? I am stronger than a black hole, or a quasar. A thousand of each could not stop me. Let me remind you that I have not yet destroyed as many of your worlds as you did of mine. You who took everything from me will pay everything! Have the dignity to die bravely.”
He broke the link.
The cries of the Snake flooded in again.
Gorgias listened.
Someone was walking around in his mind. He pulled away from the ship’s mindscape and looked into himself. Two figures came toward him from a great distance; his mother, Oriona, and his brother, Herkon.
“Go away!” he shouted.
But they drew nearer.
“You have nothing to say to me!”
Oriona shot toward him, invading his center, examining painful memories.
“You were cruel to your father,” she announced, “to Myraa. You burned the homes of innocent people, and now you are destroying whole worlds. You no longer care about justice, you only wish revenge, which has no end beyond selfish satisfaction.” She wrapped herself around his twinges of conscience and squeezed, seeking to give him pain.
“I don’t care,” he said, “pain is an old friend.”
Minds of all shapes appeared within him, as numerous as stars. He felt their scrutiny, their disdain.
“You are all fools!” he shouted. “So grateful for your existence! You worship a seething blindness, and you make no difference in the world from which you came. I have learned to do more than warm myself before the force-center. Go away, or I will find a way to destroy you all!”
“Gorgias,” Herkon called, “what do you have?”
“The strength of my hatred, the knowledge that it has always been justified, and now I will have the satisfaction of destroying those who murdered our kind.”
“But no happiness, Gorgias.”
“Happiness is vague and general. Satisfaction is specific. I will have what I have worked for!”
“And then?” Oriona asked tenderly.
“I will remake worlds, repopulate cities. I will be the heart of the reborn Cluster.”
“In a perishing universe?” she asked. “It was not made for endless life, or for knowing. It is a toy for young minds, which grow into greater realms.”
“I was not given what I should have had,” Gorgias insisted. “I am not finished here yet. But why should you care? If what you say is true, then leave me to do as I wish.”
“Turn away, son, turn away!”
“You’re so certain! Then make me see what you’re talking about!”
But the galaxy of minds was silent, convincing him that they had nothing to offer; they also lived in a predicament of some kind. Perhaps they needed him for a purpose?
Myraa appeared next to Oriona.
“Turn away, Gorgias,” she said, “follow us.”
“Go away,” he repeated.
Minds crowded around him suddenly, squeezing him toward nothingness.
The force-center flowed into him, helping him resist collapse. He held his space, counterbalancing the pressure, but unable to throw it back.
Suddenly he was in a line of soldiers on a battlefield, advancing toward a house on a hill. Orders barked inside his suit helmet. Dark ships floated in the sky, cutting across the troops with massive beams. Cries burst in his ears as he was pushed into a vise of bodies.
The house on the hill was hidden by a restraining field. He was there, he realized, watching his army die; and he was here, watching a beam sizzle across the ground. It reached him and he smelled burning in his helmet. The fire cut through his armor and plunged into his body, melting his heart, penetrating deeper, pumping pain for the eternity that it would take him to die.…
“But I did not die,” he whispered, listening to the screams of his soldiers.
“I am here,” Crusus said into his ear.
So Myraa had saved him after all.
Crusus entered him with knives of revenge, twisting, plunging, cutting. “Feel what I felt, my General! I gave you everything. How did you serve me? We waited centuries to be butchered!”
Oriona hovered nearby. “He is like you,” she said. “How do you like him?”
Crusus severed his head. Gorgias felt his body twitch. His mother picked up his head as he opened its eyes. Crusus was still raging over the body with his knives.
“You cannot hurt me!” Gorgias shouted, hanging by his hair from Oriona’s hand.
“Gorgias, stop,” Herkon pleaded.
Crusus changed into a hideous alien form. Jaws opened and crushed the headless corpse. Blood ran into the darkness.
“I am past fear,” Gorgias said as Oriona lifted him high and gazed into his eyes. “The rest of you have come into this realm like beggars, but I will become its master.”
She gave him a long questioning look, and for an instant her doubt became his own; then she hurled his head into the void.
He tumbled, laughing in triumph, knowing that his will was joined to the blind absolute. The force-center rose from behind the night. He fell into a close orbit around it and drew nourishment. His eyes burned, his hair flamed; the flesh flowed from his skull, but he felt no pain.
The meek could not imagine what he would dare.
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X. Behind the Night
“Behind the night … somewhere afar
Some white tremendous daybreak.”
— Rupert Brooke
“When Nero ordered the death of his teacher, Seneca, the old Stoic went to his bath and opened his veins; but the stimulating discussion of his friends quieted his feelings and provoked his eloquence to the point where he closed his wounds, so that he might carry on the philosophical discussion for a time. He even dictated a treatise before resuming his stately approach to death.”
— Roman gossip
THE RING WAS THINNING.
Kurbi saw a group of worlds break formation and wink out into jumpspace. Others, he knew, were installing pushers and warpers. The rush for mobility would save lives in the short run, but sooner or later Gorgias would hunt down the fugitives.
So the empire of Earth was staggering to its end, dying of a war it had won centuries ago, he thought as he reclined on his terrace. The death blow would come from a god without a body, enforcing
his will from beyond the grave.
No invading hordes battering at the gates of civilization. No complex economic struggle. His historian’s brain insisted that Earth would fall to satisfy simple hatred, paying a thousand times the price it had exacted from the Herculeans.
What remained of the fleet was going out into the Snake, to take the Whisper Ship by surprise, if possible. The officers and crews were all volunteers, convinced that a successful defense was still possible, one way or another.
Rik was out there somewhere, fleeing with the worlds. His son had erased much of his memory by the time of Grazia’s death, becoming too much of a different person to be affected by the news.I should have sought him out sooner , Kurbi thought,when he would still have known me . Rik had no past inside him; that would not save him when Gorgias caught up with the fugitive worlds.My past will come looking for you, but you will not know it .
“You’re still determined to stay,” Julian said.
Kurbi saw the image out of the corner of his eye, but did not turn his head. “I belong here.”
“We’ll leave together, Raf.”
“And have him hunt us?”
Poincaré clenched his fists. “I can’t believe that you’ve given up like this!”
“There’s not much to live for anyway. Let him make a clean sweep.”
“You’ve never been free of that way of thinking,” Poincaré said, his voice tense and trembling. “Always ready to kick over the game board and make a quick exit.”
“Game is right. Why shouldn’t I rid myself of it? It throws us up against our limits as human beings too much. Is this all there is? We’re appalled as we ask the question.”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t know.…”
“Don’t you see?” Kurbi asked, sitting upright. “Gorgias has broken his limits more than once now. He’s almost fulfilled. By some quirk his desire has found all it needs to satisfy itself, and maybe more.…”
“What? He’s a strained, tormented rag of a personality, if you can still call him a person.”
“He’s shown us that there is more to the universe,” Kurbi continued, “than the shackles we’ve known. The myth of our history has us breaking one chain after another, but we’ve only moved away from genuine possibilities. Gorgias has entered a realm which has grown from roots deep in reality. Those roots probably spring from regions deeper than we can imagine. But the important fact is that they flowerelsewhere , beyond the sorry range of our abilities. The Herculeans found the way, and we dismissed their discovery as some kind of cult.”
Julian looked exasperated. The pale light of the room from which his image was being cast emphasized the anxiety in his face.
“Don’t you see?” Kurbi insisted. “It’s important for our peace of mind tounderstand what is happening, even if there is nothing we can do.”
“You must be joking.”
“It’s the way I’ve lived my life,” Kurbi added.
Julian seemed to sit down in the air. “Fine! And you want to be consistent to the end. I’m sorry, but it’s just a way of quieting yourself before the death blow. That’s all I see.”
“Understanding is the only victory left to me,” Kurbi said, sitting back again.
Poincaré took a deep breath. “Okay, Raf. I want to hear how clear you can make all this. Not very, I suspect.”
“You’re not really interested.”
“Go ahead,” Poincaré said softly.
“The universe of matter is only an aspect of youthful consciousness,” Kurbi answered, “but, under certain conditions, consciousness can go on developing. Our cosmos is probably only one of many which organizes conscious intelligence out of the geometries of smaller, infinitesimal realms, and is abandoned when that intelligence matures, leaving behind an empty shell of run-down energies. Sometimes intelligence fails to make the climb and dies within the rotting fruit.”
“And we’re a failed universe.”
“We may become one if Gorgias isn’t stopped.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’s directing his interest back into the cradle, instead of developing … outward. He’s using directly the power which underlies all things.”
“To settle old scores. Maybe there is nothing else for him out there.”
“He can’t see what there may be for him for some reason,” Kurbi insisted. “He won’t surrender his old attachments.” He looked at Poincaré. The Security Chief bit his lower lip and turned away. “Perhaps it was the manner of his death,” Kurbi continued. “In any case, the persistence of his hatred has blinded him. He has so much strength now that he doesn’t have to be particularly crafty; it would be hard to make a mistake when you can afford to use unlimited means to kill flies. He can indulge himself.”
“I’m not so sure he can’t make a mistake. What about Myraa’s group? Can’t they do anything?”
“They haven’t been able to restrain him, or convince him of their way. Maybe they don’t have much to offer him. But I’m sure they’ve been learning for some time.”
Julian gestured with his hand. “Why should you care? What’s in it for you?”
“It angers me that we won’t have a chance to grow, to see what they have glimpsed before he destroys us. There will be no survival, only death.”
“You might not like what they’ve seen.”
Kurbi sighed. “That’s possible. I’ve liked to think that something in the fabric of eternity finds the destruction of conscious beings abhorrent, so it conserves and nurtures unique things, drawing them upward through the scale of things into … fellowship with itself.”
Poincaré was silent. “Well,” he said finally, “that lets out any chance of happiness in physical immortality.” He was sounding more irritated. “Whatcan there be in that resurrection realm which Gorgias fails to see? Maybe he’s right and everyone else, including you, is being sentimental.”
Kurbi smiled to himself. If only it were true, and he could forget all this as some kind of delusion. “There is a blind force-center,” he continued. “It exists necessarily, is self-sustaining, and cannot be dissipated.”
“Gorgias powers his weapon with that.”
“Yes.”
“What is Myraa’s group doing with this force-center?”
“Her configuration is made up of many old, surviving intelligences, in addition to the Herculeans. Some derive from nonhuman sources. The whole group is forming an event horizon of mind around the heart of fire. The blindness will acquire awareness, they hope, much as unconscious matter evolved into intelligent life in our plenum. A god will arise at the end of history and be a product of it, not its creator.”
“No Omega-god until the end? But you think this may fail.”
Kurbi nodded. “I feel it within myself as a weakness, a lack of resolve.”
“Well, you have given a lot of thought to this tearful and tragic stuff, but —”
“Myraa provided most of it, and it’s true. The force-center underlies everything we see and feel. Future and past are one above our level of perception.”
“Raf, what are we talking about?”
“The danger that a particular species may fail to join the flowering of Omega. That’s what I fear is happening to us and Myraa’s group. Her physical form holds the candidate configuration together, but the mind net may dissipate if her body is destroyed. The complex may not be able to hold its developing shape if it is not weaned gradually. Gorgias himself may not be able to persist without her, despite his partial invasion of the Whisper Ship. Her mind-body focuses and concentrates. Who would collect her if she died? Are there others with her skills?”
“On Myraa’s World,” Julian said.
“They’re too far away.”
“If all this is right,” Poincaré said angrily, “then we should have killed her when we had the chance. Would you let all of humanity perish to insure the survival of Omega?”
“It’s not a logic I invented,” Kurbi answered. “The unive
rse is not as we would like it. I don’t know. Maybe oblivion is to be preferred. But when I think of all the generations of living things which have gone into death.…”
“I would kill her if I could,” Poincaré said. “Maybe we still can. It’s our only chance. All these eschatological issues weigh on me only because you’re involved, Raf, and there may be practical difficulties —”
“But you should understand. More than anything —”
“These may be realities. You talk as if they were truths long known.”
“You wear blinders, Julian. Worse, you want to.”
He shrugged. “Countless microcreatures make up my body. They don’t interest me as long as they do their job. We can’t help but be blind. All life is lived between extremes of large and small. Dig below small, or climb into large, and all experience becomes distorted as far as we’re concerned.”
“So you feel that we can never be more than we are?”
“We’ve tried to be more, Raf, and it’s never worked!”
“Nothing gave us our limits except blind environment, and we haven’t lived in the given environment for millennia. You blur distinctions and won’t deal with the merits of what I’m saying.”
“Merits!” Poincaré laughed nervously. “You’re sitting here waiting to die, and you want me to agree with you! Our ships will try to destroy the Whisper Ship one more time. If it means killing Myraa and closing some way to a distant yonder, then so be it! If it’s there, we’ll find it again some day. We live long enough to have the time to search.”
Kurbi ignored him and looked up at the stars. There was a clear gap in the ring now, and it seemed that the arch of worlds standing in the ocean would collapse at any moment.
Gorgias reached out.
Fifty ships moved toward him through jumpspace.
So, the fools would try again. He felt their desperation, but it would be no challenge; pity that he could not rob them of the satisfaction of trying.
He looked into the cabin. Myraa stared at him from the command station. Sooner or later, he knew, she would attempt to move against him again, but he could not simply destroy her; the ship could not be all the embodiment that he would ever need. Through her, he would have to live the life which the loss of his body had denied him. By manipulating her reproductive system, he would in time be able to give birth to a copy of his previous form and occupy it.
George Zebrowski Page 28