by Greg Bear
But what was Mirsky, that his reappearance should supersede even the abilities of the Hexamon? Had wonders gone full circle, back to the realm of religion again?
What Mirsky had shown them…The combination of simplified visuals and words and incomprehensible sounds projected into their minds…His innards still curled at the memory of the experience.
What would Karen have thought, from her less Western perspective? Born in China of parents defected from England, her capacity for wonders might be increased by a different attitude toward reality. At least, she had never seemed quite as culture-shocked, future-shocked, as Lanier had felt. She had accepted the inevitable and undeniable with calmness and pragmatism.
Lanier knuckled his closed eyes and turned over, trying to find elusive sleep. Now that he could not possibly see her, he realized he missed Karen. Even with the hidden bitterness of their last few years together, they shared something with her when they were together: a common link with the past.
Was it that he was simply too old to accept these new realities? Would pseudo-Talsit help, or a cleansing of his mental channels through a new youthfulness?
He swore under his breath and started to get out of the bunk, but there was no place he could safely go in the compound, no place where he was unobserved. And he needed isolation now, needed darkness and freedom from stimulus. He felt like a transported animal clinging to the security of an enclosed cage. Opening the door, he might be assaulted by another barrage of impossibilities.
While Lanier tried to sleep, Korzenowski was arranging a meeting with the president and several key corpreps. There was a good possibility that Judith Hoffman, Lanier’s boss and mentor four decades ago, would be present.
Lanier had not kept up with her activities for years. He was not surprised to learn she had undergone pseudo-Talsit and transplant rejuvenation, but it came as something of a shock when Korzenowski informed him she was leading the Thistledown faction that supported re-opening the Way.
The trains between Thistledown’s chambers were as efficient as ever, sleek silver millipedes gliding at several hundred kilometers an hour through their narrow tunnels. Lanier sat beside Mirsky, and Korzenowski sat opposite, all lost in silence.
Theirs was a cosmic shyness with little room for small talk—not after what Mirsky had showed them. Mirsky took the silent treatment stoically, peering through the windows at the surrounding tunnel darkness and the sudden explosion of cityscape as the train emerged into tubelight.
The third chamber metropolis, Thistledown City, had been designed and built after the asteroid’s launch, taking advantage of lessons learned in the construction of Alexandria in the second chamber. Its enormous towers rose from slender bases to wide tops five kilometers above the valley floor. Soaring suspended structures reached across the curve of the chamber like skyscrapers strung along a curtain. The glittering mega-plexes, each as capacious as a good-sized town on prewar Earth, seemed poised for imminent disaster. Much of Thistledown City was an architectural nightmare to unaccustomed eyes, always teetering, threatening to collapse in a stray wind.
Yet these buildings had survived the stopping and re-rotation of the asteroid during the Sundering, with comparatively little damage.
“It’s truly beautiful,” Mirsky said, breaking the silence. He leaned forward and shook his head enthusiastically, grinning like a boy.
“Quite a compliment from a man who’s seen the end of time,” Korzenowski observed.
He doesn’t act like an avatar, Lanier thought.
After the Sundering, Thistledown City had been reoccupied by citizens from the precincts. An abortive attempt to bring Old Natives to the asteroid and settle them had been called off after the new immigrants expressed great unhappiness; most had been returned to Earth, where they would not be overawed by unnatural splendor. Lanier sympathized.
Now, the city was about one-fifth full, citizens clustering together in certain areas, others in less populated regions often living one or two families to a building. If ever large numbers of Earth’s inhabitants could be persuaded to make Thistledown their home, space aplenty waited for them.
All of the city’s parks had been restored, unlike in Alexandria, where restoration was still in progress. Some had been replanted with flora brought up from Earth. Conservators were encouraging endangered animals from Earth to breed in various spectacular zoos completed within the past two decades. The second and third chamber libraries contained the genetic records of every Earth species known at the time of Thistledown’s launch, but a large number of species had vanished in the years after the Death; now was their chance to prevent those extinctions.
The Terrestrial Hexamon Nexus met in the middle of a thousand-acre rain forest. A wide, low translucent dome the color of a clear twilight sky vaulted over much of the forest and the Nexus meeting chambers; under the dome, the tubelight was transformed into glorious sunlight and clouds.
The Nexus was not in session this day. The meeting chambers, a circular arena and central stage, were almost empty.
Judith Hoffman sat in an aisle seat near the central stage. Lanier, Mirsky and Korzenowski walked down the aisle abreast, and she turned in her seat, cocking an eyebrow. With a quick glance, she summed up Mirsky and Korzenowski, and then she smiled at Lanier. He stepped aside and met her welcoming hug while Mirsky and Korzenowski waited.
“It’s wonderful to see you again, Garry,” she said.
“It’s been too long.” He smiled broadly, feeling more energetic and reassured just in her presence. She had allowed herself to age a little, Lanier noted, though she still appeared twenty years younger than he; her hair was steely gray and her face carried a look of tired, careworn dignity.
She had deliberately ignored the more advanced fashions of Thistledown City, where apparel might consist of illusion as much as cloth. Instead, she had chosen a stolid gray pants suit with just a hint of feminine cut to her lapels. She wore a pictor necklace and carried a small slate at least four decades old, the equivalent here of a quill pen.
“How’s Karen? Have you been keeping up with Lenore and Larry?”
“Karen’s fine. She might be here now. She’s working with Suli Ram Kikura on a social project.” He swallowed. “Lenore is in Oregon now, I believe. Larry died a few months ago.”
Hoffman’s mouth made a surprised O. “I hadn’t heard…Damn. That’s a Christian for you.” She clasped his hand and sighed. “I’ll miss him. I’ve been out of touch up here—too much so. I’ve missed you all, but there’s been a lot of work.” The other three representatives approached from another aisle: David Par Jordan, Assistant and Advocate to the President, a small, delicate Thistledown-born man with white-blond hair; Sixth Chamber Supervisor Deorda Ti Negranes, a tall, lithe female homorph dressed in black; and Eula Mason, a squat, powerful woman with hawklike features, corprep for Axis Thoreau, an orthodox but not extreme Naderite with substantial power as a swing vote in the lower Nexus.
Mirsky watched them all with his mild, distanced expression, like an actor waiting to be called on stage. Hoffman shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with Korzenowski, then turned to Mirsky. She folded her hands in front of her chest. “Garry,” she said, “is this man who he says he is?”
Lanier knew his judgment would be relied upon implicitly. “I wasn’t sure to start with, but now, I think he is, yes.”
“Ser Mirsky, my pleasure to meet you again,” Hoffman said. “Under circumstances more peaceful, and certainly more mysterious.” She unfolded her hands and extended one with some hesitation. Mirsky grasped it by the fingertips and bowed.
Chivalry from the end of time, Lanier thought. What next?
“Indeed, Ser Hoffman,” he said. “Much has changed.”
As they adjourned to a meeting room in the complex beneath the arena, introductions were made all around, with a social awkwardness that Lanier found amusing, considering the circumstances. Human convention could trivialize even the most momentous occasions, and perhaps tha
t was its purpose—to bring enormous events down to a human scale.
Korzenowski pointedly did not go into detail about Mirsky.
“We have some complicated and important evidence to bring before the Nexus and the president,” Korzenowski said as they took seats around a small round table.
“I have one question, and I can’t wait to ask it,” Eula Mason said, features stern. “I know very little about Ser Mirsky. He’s on Old Native—pardon me, a Terrestrial—and he has Russian ancestry, but your introduction doesn’t explain his importance, Ser Korzenowski. Where does he come from?”
“From a great distance in space and in time,” the Engineer said. “He’s presented us with some disturbing news, and he’s ready to testify before this select group. I warn you—you’ve never experienced anything like such testimony, even in city memory.”
“I make it a habit to avoid city memory,” Mason said. “I respect you, Ser Korzenowski, but I dislike mystery and I certainly dislike having my time wasted.”
For ostensible allies united against the re-opening, Lanier thought Mason was being remarkably uncongenial to Korzenowski.
Korzenowski was unfazed. “I’ve asked the four of you here because this is so unusual a circumstance, and I’d like a kind of rehearsal before we go on to the full Nexus.”
“Will we need aspirin?” Hoffman asked Lanier, leaning in his direction.
“Probably,” Lanier said.
Negranes’s design as a homorph was a little too extreme for Lanier’s tastes; her facial features were too small on her head, and her body was proportioned in ways that exceeded the natural—emphasis on length of legs and thickness of thighs, extremely long fingers, an almost masculine chest. Yet her bearing was regal and it was obvious she knew her place in this room, and on Thistledown. “Is this evidence designed to discourage re-opening, Ser Engineer?”
“I think it may allow us to reach a compromise,” Korzenowski said.
That’s a bit optimistic, Lanier thought.
Mason squinted with unconcealed suspicion. Obviously, Korzenowski was not completely trusted in his own camp. That was hardly surprising; he had designed the Way in the first place.
“Then let’s have it,” Par Jordan said.
“This time, I will not use a projector,” Mirsky said. “I will spare Sers Korzenowski and Lanier…They have suffered my story once already.”
When the presentation was over, Hoffman laid her head on the table and sighed. Lanier rubbed her neck and shoulder gently with one hand. “God,” she exclaimed, her voice muffled. Par Jordan and Negranes seemed stunned.
Mason stood, hands trembling. “This is a farce,” she said, turning on Korzenowski. “I’m amazed you believed this willful deception. You are certainly not the man my father put his confidence in—”
“Eula,” Korzenowski said, facing her coldly, “sit down. This is not deception. You know that as well as I.”
“What is it, then?” she asked, voice shrill. “I don’t understand any of it!”
“Yes, you do. It’s quite clear, however amazing.”
“What does he want us to do?” she continued. Korzenowski raised his hand and nodded his head, asking for patience. Mason found just enough patience to fold her arms and sit rigidly back in her chair.
“Do you have any questions?” he asked Negranes and Par Jordan.
Par Jordan seemed the least disturbed of them all. “You think the president should see this? I mean, experience it?” he asked.
“It must be the entire Nexus, please, for a decision,” Mirsky said. “As soon as possible.” They looked at him as if he were an unexpected ghost—or perhaps a very large insect. They were noticeably reluctant to speak to him directly.
“Ser Korzenowski, that’s going to be difficult. I sympathize with Ser Mason’s reaction…”
She slapped her open hand on the table, vindicated.
Negranes lifted her head. “I’ve never felt anything like it,” she said. “It makes me feel immeasurably small. Is everything so futile, that we simply vanish and are forgotten in time?”
“Not forgotten,” Mirsky said. “Please. You are not forgotten. I am here.”
“Why you?” Negranes asked. “Why not some better-known figure from the Hexamon?”
“I volunteered, in a way. I offered myself,” Mirsky said.
Hoffman fixed Korzenowski with her clear brown eyes. “We’ve been opposed on this question for a long time. I’m sure Garry is surprised to hear I’ve been supporting re-opening. How do you feel, experiencing this? Have you changed your mind?”
Korzenowski didn’t answer for a moment. Then, using a tone of voice that made Lanier jump—a familiar tone, that of Patricia Vasquez—he said, “I’ve always known it was inevitable. I’ve never enjoyed inevitability. I don’t enjoy this, now. I designed the Way, and was punished for doing so by assassination. I was brought back, and I saw what progress we had made, and how much we had gained as human beings—not lost. We were trapped by our own glories.
“I was certain that returning to Earth would balance out our problems, but the Way is like a drug. We have been using this drug for so long, we cannot break free of it, so long as the possibility for re-opening remains.”
“You sound ambivalent,” Mason said.
“I think the Way must be re-opened. And then it must be destroyed. I see no alternative to the method presented by Ser Mirsky.”
“Re-opening,” Mason said, shaking her head. “Finally giving in.”
“Our responsibility is a heavy burden,” the Engineer continued. “The Way must be dismantled. It blocks the designs of those whose goals are far larger than anything we can easily imagine.”
“Count on this,” Mason said. “If we favor any kind of reopening, they will not let us dismantle.” She nodded at Negranes and Hoffman.
Hoffman looked at Lanier, her face only now regaining some of its color. “By all means. The Nexus must see this. I believe this man is Mirsky, and that’s remarkable enough to convince me.”
Par Jordan stood. “I’ll make my recommendation to the president.”
“What is your recommendation?” Mirsky asked.
“I doubt we can block testimony before the Nexus. I don’t know whether we’d want to. I just…don’t know.” He took a deep breath. “The disruption is going to be unbelievable.”
Lanier suddenly longed for a chance to relive that moment on the mountain, when he had first seen the hiker descending the path.
Given another chance, he might run away as fast as cramped legs allowed.
18
Gaia, Alexandreia, Lokhias Promontory
Kleopatra the Twenty-first greeted the young woman warmly in the sitting room of her private quarters. The queen’s hair was shot with gray and her eyes lackluster. The scar across her cheek, a badge of honor well-known throughout the Oikoumenē, appeared red and puffy. She looked exhausted.
The Kelt was not allowed into the private quarters. Rhita felt vaguely sorry for the man, always cooling his heels someplace away from his primary duty—protecting her.
“You were not treated well at the Mouseion,” Kleopatra said, sitting across a transparent rose-veined quartz table from the young woman. “I ask your forgiveness and understanding.”
Rhita nodded, not knowing what to say, thinking it best to let the queen speak. Kleopatra seemed agitated, ill at ease.
“Your request for an audience was expected, and welcome,” she continued. “I’m afraid your grandmother thought I lost faith in her.” The queen smiled faintly. “Perhaps I did. It is easy to lose faith in a world of disappointments. But I never doubted her word. I needed to believe in what she said. Is that easy to understand?”
Rhita realized her silence might be interpreted as shock at being in the presence of royalty. Strangely, she was not nervous. “Yes. I understand.”
“From what I’ve been told, you were not close to your grandmother, not all your life.”
“No, my Queen.”
Kleopatra waved away the formality, fixing her tired eyes on Rhita. “She chose you for something?”
“Yes.”
“What?” The queen’s hand gestured for her to be more forthcoming, as if urging her closer.
“She put me in charge of the Objects,” Rhita said.
“The clavicle?”
“Yes, my Queen.”
“Is it busy disappointing us again?”
“It shows a new gate, your Imperial Hypsēlotēs. This one has stayed in place for three years.”
“Where?”
“In the steppes of Nordic Rhus, west of the Kaspian Sea.”
The queen thought that over for a moment, brows drawn together. Her scar lightened in color. “Not easy to get to. Does anybody else know it’s there?”
“Not that I know of, my Queen.”
“Do you know where it leads?”
Rhita shook her head.
“There’s nothing…more convincing about this particular gate?”
“In what way, my Queen?”
Try as she might, Rhita could not change her method of address. It seemed almost sacrilegious to speak to the woman baldly, without some kind of obeisance.
“I suppose I’m asking for security. If I outfit an expedition, brave the diplomatic difficulties of sending it to Nordic Rhus—should we be caught, I mean, since there’s no question of asking permission—and it’s all for nothing, a hole to nowhere…”
“I can’t guarantee anything, my Queen.”
Kleopatra shook her head sadly, then smiled again. “Neither could your grandmother.” She took a deep breath. “She was, and you are, both very lucky to have me as queen. Someone more intelligent, more pragmatic, would not listen to either of you.”
Rhita nodded solemnly, braced for rejection.
“Do you have any idea what lies on the other side of this gate? Any notion at all?”
