Sol didn’t like the sound of that. He much preferred things to be straightforward and simple. No anomalies allowed.
‘What sort of anomaly?’ He wondered if he really wanted to know the answer and guessed from everyone’s sour looks that he didn’t.
‘It relates to the extraction of the Founders. I set up a simulation to examine the effects of the evacuation. Initially, the results were exactly as predicted, the constants becoming more stable as more Founders were removed. That trend continued until almost all the Founders had been evacuated – and then it reversed.’
‘Reversed?’ Now Sol was worried too. What exactly was Gary saying?
‘Yes.’ Gary licked his lips again before continuing. He looked like he’d prefer to be anywhere but here. ‘The mathematics are quite definite about this. To protect the universe, two Founders must remain in sub-quantal space and, here’s the weird bit, they must be of differing gender – one male and one female. Mathematically, it has to do with the discovery that sub-quantal space might be conscious. I don’t exactly know how to explain it in non-mathematical terms. It’s almost as if sub-quantal space needs company, and it’s specified exactly what that company should be.’
‘But sub-quantal space isn’t alive,’ Sol said. He saw the doubt on the others faces. ‘Is it?’
‘It depends on how you interpret the consciousness waveform,’ Chayka put in. ‘Dr Brennan’s work suggests that it’s acting in such a way that it might be designated sentient.’
Sol digested that in his usual pragmatic way. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t give a hoot if sub-quantal space was sentient or not – that was something for the boffins to get excited about. All he cared about were the restrictions the thing seemed to have imposed on the evacuation project, and they didn’t appear to be unmanageable.
‘Seems to me, all we need is a couple of volunteers,’ he said. ‘Or am I wrong?’
‘You’re right, Dad,’ Juliette said, ‘but it’s easier said than done. When we free the Founders into normal space, they disappear to who-knows-where. They kind of do their own thing, and there’s no means of contacting them. Evara says she might be able to find one or two, but not in the time we have.’
‘And how much time is that?’ Sol was getting a sinking feeling in his stomach.
‘Well, if we leave two behind, the problem’s solved. However, once we get them all out, we’re down to only minutes before the constants degrade irreversibly.’
‘Okay, so we need to contact our buddies and tell them to leave two behind. Chard …’
‘Too late,’ Chard said. ‘Swift has just informed me that the last Founder has just been freed. Only Adam now remains in sub-quantal space.’
There was another mighty shake, and this time part of the ceiling collapsed and a water main ruptured, spraying cold water at high pressure into the lab. Immediately, all the electronics went off, and they were left staring at an empty screen. There were screams from the lab workers and everyone rushed to get out into the open before the building collapsed on them. Everything was chaos.
‘Oh God, this is it!’ Gary yelled.
Evara shouted to Juliette. ‘Juliette, fold everyone out of here except for your dad and me.’ She turned to Sol and touched his arm urgently. ‘Sol, you must take me back into sub-quantal space. Now!’
‘I can’t reach sub-quantal space. And what good would it do anyway? There are no Founders left. Just Adam.’
‘You’ve got to trust me on this. It’ll work. I know you can’t get to sub-quantal space – or at least wouldn’t be able to get out again – but you can get to the infra-low. If you drop me off near the hole, I’ll be able to slip through. Remember, the energy gradient in this direction works to our advantage.’
Sol stared at her. ‘And this’ll work? You and Adam? But, that means …’
‘Yes, it does. Now will you get moving?’
He goggled at her, then saw the look on her face and realised the urgency of the situation. ‘Sorry. Okay. So, how do I get you piggy-backed on? Hell, I’m not trained for this.’
‘Sol, you can do it. You must do it, or the universe is doomed. Think positive thoughts. Relax.’
With everything falling around him, relaxing wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. He immersed and dived down to delta-normal where Deira had told him she had found the answer to the time-space-fold. He knew he had to achieve the relaxation of nirvana if he was going to successfully piggy-back Evara’s energy body. Unfortunately, it just didn’t want to come. He tried to think positive thoughts. Hell, all he could think of was the catastrophe that was occurring to the universe. It was hopeless.
§
Back in Boston, the agents had just liberated Barth, the final Founder, and he had lost no time disappearing into the wider universe. The four young agents on the survey ship had folded back to the old brownstone and an impromptu celebration was underway. Then the universe quake struck. They all looked dumbfounded. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Josh looked around the assembled agents. ‘Have we missed one?’
There were shakes of heads all round. ‘We kept meticulous count, and Barth double-checked,’ Victor said. ‘There’s only Adam left.’
Josh frowned. ‘Could he be the problem?’
‘I don’t see how – he’s not a Founder,’ Tao said. ‘But if he’s the only one left we should probably get him out too and see if that helps. I’ll go get him.’
‘No. You’ve got the baby,’ Josh said. ‘I’ll go.’
Before anybody could argue he immersed, emerging again only a few seconds later.
‘I’ve got him. Sub-quantal space is empty.’
‘It doesn’t seem to have made any difference,’ Tao said. ‘We’re still seeing major quake activity, and the sun’s beginning to dim.’
‘So, what are we missing,’ Josh desperately tried to think. ‘Any of you AIs got any good ideas?’
None of them had, and the agents gazed at each other in confusion and a gathering sense of doom. Had all their hard work been for nothing? Was this really the end of everything? Tao suddenly clutched at her belly.
‘What is it?’ Josh asked anxiously.
‘Don’t know. Young Joe just became very active. Whoa! There he goes again.’
The movements of the growing child were plainly evident, even through Tao’s uniform. There was a rippling motion spreading across her abdomen from left to right, and then back again. Then it stopped.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘He’s settled again and there’s no pain. I’m sure he’s alright.’
‘Well he won’t be in a few minutes if we can’t find the answer to this problem,’ Deira put in. ‘Where’s Sol, anyway?’
§
Sol was in a very bad place indeed. He knew that everything was down to him, yet he simply couldn’t get his act together. He berated himself for the umpteenth time, and for the umpteenth time realised that this wasn’t what Evara meant by positive thoughts. He tried talking to himself.
‘Come on, you big bastard. You can do this. If Dee could do it, you can. Come on.’
He suddenly felt something happening and, since it felt positive, he concentrated on whatever it was. He didn’t know what he was doing, and he knew he was completely out of his depth, but he continued pushing anyway. Then he heard a voice.
‘Come on, Grandad – one last push.’
’Huh? Who’s that?’
‘You know who it is. Now come on. I’ll give you a hand.’
He pushed again – and then it happened. It felt like a blockage had been removed, allowing everything to flow as it should, and he knew instinctively what he had to do. He activated the piggy-backing mechanism easily, as if he’d been doing it all his life.
‘Way to go, Sol,’ came Evara’s voice.’ Now get me into the infra-low.’
Sol didn’t pause to evaluate what he’d just done, he knew how important it was that he act quickly. He told Chard to give him thirty seconds then dived into t
he infra-low with Evara attached. He released her near the hole at the bottom and waited for her to carry on through. She paused.
‘Sol,’ she whispered. ‘Come here.’ He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant down here in the infra-low, but he somehow managed to edge up closer to her. ‘I think you deserve this,’ she said, ‘but it’s for you only. You’ll be unable to tell anyone else.’
He was about to ask her what she meant when he received a mentalic download. It wasn’t much in terms of size, but the content figuratively hit him between the eyes and left him reeling.
‘What?’ He was still trying to make sense of it when Evara produced her next surprise. She somehow arranged to get up-close and intimate and give him the mentalic equivalent of a kiss.
‘Goodbye, Sol,’ she said.
Those two words conveyed so much – sadness, pride, determination and, yes, even love. Then she was gone, streaking through the hole in the infra-low into sub-quantal space, leaving Sol gasping at what he’d just been told. He recovered sufficiently to call after her and might even have followed her had not the energy stimulus from Chard arrived just at that moment. Then it was all too late. He was yanked unceremoniously into delta-normal and back to reality.
‘
He gazed around, still staggered by the download, and confused that nothing in the outside world seemed to have changed in spite of Evara’s departure. The lab was shaking continuously, pieces of ceiling covered the floor and a stray mains electricity cable was flapping about, sending sparks everywhere and getting perilously close to the flooded area. The light was also dimming rapidly, and when he looked out of a window, he saw the sun as he’d never seen it before. It looked like a blood orange in the sky and was surrounded by a crimson aurora. Things were clearly desperate, and he couldn’t decide why. He thought he’d done what needed to be done.
‘What the fuck’s the problem now?’ he yelled.
‘I don’t know.’ Chard said. ‘I suggest we get back home and find out.’
Without a word, Sol folded.
When he stepped into the living room he found the agents looking downcast and beaten. It was clear they’d run out of ideas, and they stared at him bleakly, with hopeless eyes.
‘What have you done?’ he shouted.
They looked baffled at the question, even Josh and Deira apparently unsure what he meant.
‘Nothing,’ Josh said defensively. ‘We got all the Founders out, as we planned but it didn’t seem to do any good, so we brought Adam out for good measure. That hasn’t helped either.’
‘Shit! That’s it! Get Adam back in as fast as you can!’ Sol shook Josh’s arm. ‘Don’t argue, boy, just do it. I know what I’m talking about.’
Josh flashed a startled glance at Deira, who nodded.
‘Do it, Josh.’
He immersed, and a few seconds later emerged again.
‘Adam’s back,’ he said.
Immediately, the shaking stopped, and the atmospheric opacity began to resolve. The sun would take several hours to regain its usual appearance, but its bloody countenance was already beginning to fade and the scarlet flares that had been shooting out into the night sky were settling down. All was suddenly and eerily silent, as if the universe was taking a big breath before getting back to its day-to-day business, and everyone stared at Sol in amazement. Predictably, it was Deira who asked the question that was in all their minds.
‘Sol, what the hell was that about? How did you know?’
He told them about Gary’s findings and how sub-quantal space appeared to ‘require’ two Founders to maintain the constants.
‘We were too late to stop you evacuating the Founders.’ he said, ‘Evara elected to return at the last minute to join Adam, thinking that would do the trick. We didn’t bank on you bringing Adam out as well.’
‘But Adam isn’t a Founder,’ Deira said.
Perhaps it was the disaster they’d so closely avoided, or maybe they were all tired out from their recent evacuation work. Whatever it was, it appeared to have left them bereft of reasoning power, and they stood, gazing at Sol in bewilderment.
‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘It’s so obvious.’
There was silence.
‘They’re human,’ he said. ‘The Founders are human – or were at some point in their evolution.’
Chapter 48
It all makes sense,’ Josh said. The agents were sitting in Deira’s living room, coming to terms with the end of their mission and Sol’s recent revelation. Some were drinking coffee to stave off the tiredness that was threatening to overwhelm them, others were sipping something a little stronger. Juliette had appeared soon after Sol’s revelation. She was getting very accomplished at folding by now and had assumed something would be going on at home that she wouldn’t want to miss.
Sol was nursing an especially large bourbon and looking relieved that everything had worked out. ‘Yeah, doesn’t it just? Now we know why only humanity could act to open The Way. We, in the shape of the founders, created it.’
‘I should have guessed,’ Josh said. ‘Barth was elusive about that topic, though he did mention something about congruent genomes before he changed the subject.’
‘And it also accounts for their photon and dirt bodies being human,’ Deira put in. ‘We thought they were trying to make it easier for us, when what they were really doing was creating something that was familiar to them.’
‘There’s so much I’d like to ask them,’ Tao murmured. ‘Somehow, knowing this makes it all so much more personal.’
Sol took a huge gulp of bourbon. He was remembering what Evara had told him before she’d disappeared and would have loved to have shared it with everyone. Unfortunately, Evara had locked it tightly within him and he was unable to communicate it by any means, physical or mentalic.
‘I think they know things about us they don’t want to discuss,’ he said. ‘I think that’s why they’ve skedaddled off into the wider universe.’
That was the most he could get out before the mentalic blocks came on hard. He smiled at Deira and gently took her hand. He was intensely weary – a weariness that seemed to pervade his body and leach out through his pores – and he felt immensely sad because he knew what was going to happen in the near future. However, his overwhelming emotion was one of intense pride in Deira. He gazed at her with a love he couldn’t hide. Then he noticed the strange look she was giving him and realised he needed to ease off. He let go of her hand, stood up, and stretched, an action that was pure Sol.
‘So, what do we all do now?’ he said. ‘I’m not important. I’ve known for some time I’m past my sell-by date, but now we’ve saved the universe there doesn’t seem to be anything left for any of you.’
‘Something for another day.’ Deira looked away, clearly deciding he was just having one of his strange moments. ‘Right now, though, we’re going to celebrate our success. Bring me the tequila bottle.’ She had another thought. ‘And somebody go and get the rest of our young agents from the Eich. We’re going to have a celebration.’
Not unexpectedly, it was Josh who fetched the other agents, and within a few minutes, everyone had grabbed a drink and was chattering wildly, even the most tired of the agents, who Josh had managed to tweak mentalically to put off their demand for sleep for a couple of hours. They relived the highs and lows of the past few months, and it felt good. All of them had had their part to play. The agents who hadn’t yet managed the time fold had, nonetheless, participated in the counter-insurgency on the El ship, and that had been instrumental to the eventual success of the evacuation. Everyone could feel proud of their efforts. After all, it wasn’t every day you could say you’d helped save the universe – though as Sol said, it wasn’t every day you’d want to.
Finally, as the evening slowed to its natural conclusion, the tiredness began to catch up on them and, one-by-one, the young agents folded away, leaving Deira, Sol, Juliette, Josh and Tao. Deira had reached a stage of quiet contentment by now but found h
erself mulling over what Sol had asked earlier, about what they should do now. She’d been so determined to leave this until another day, but it seemed to have crept up on her unawares. It was as if, with the resolution of all the problems that had beset them over so many years, the purpose of her existence had disappeared, and she suddenly understood what Sol must have been feeling. Here they all were, advanced mentalic beings, and they suddenly had nothing to do. What had it all been about?
‘About what Sol asked earlier,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do with ourselves from now on?’
Josh was sitting on the sofa with his arm round Tao and didn’t seem especially bothered. ‘I don’t honestly know. Nor am I going to worry about it for a while. I’ve got other things to think about.’ He stroked Tao’s gently expanding belly.
‘You might have, but the other young agents are going to get fractious with nothing to do.’
‘You’re right.’ Josh thought about it briefly, but nothing seemed obvious. He looked across at Sol. ‘You got any ideas, Dad?’
Sol had started the evening in a strange mood and had become increasingly quiet as it progressed. He’d spent the last fifteen minutes sitting on his own sipping another large bourbon and was obviously deep in thought. Deira was worried about him. It was clear, from his description of his transfer of Evara back to sub-quantal space, that he’d pushed his mentalic abilities considerably. He’d almost certainly achieved the time-fold against all the odds. So, what was his problem? He should be elated.
He looked up with that strange mixture of pride and sorrow that seemed to have become his default position and squeezed Deira’s hand again.
‘There’s nothing wrong. Everything’s as it should be. You know, I almost forgot, there’s something I didn’t tell you about Evara’s transfer.’
‘Oh?’ Deira felt a degree of alarm. Was he about to explain why he was looking so glum?
‘Yeah. Dee, I wasn’t getting anywhere with that piggy-backing thing. I’d just about given up. Then there was this voice – and suddenly I could do it.’
Gods of Titan- The Cosmic Constants Page 41
