Eternity

by Greg Bear

  She might have never left city memory, the illusion was so complete, but there was a certain sensation, a knowing, that her body was being deluded and stimulated, and not just her mind. It was a moot distinction. So many distinctions were moot on Thistledown.

  We are all such children! she thought, sipping her glass and considering the distant volcano. Maybe Garry’s right to chuck it all and let old age claim him. Maybe we are all burned out after forty years, and he’s only being honest.

  The room control chimed melodiously. She leaned back in the chair and said languorously, “Yes?”

  “Two men wish to speak with you, Ser Lanier. One is your husband and the other is Pavel Mirsky.”

  Involuntarily, she shivered. Speak of two devils. “Drop the islands and give me the standard setting.” The porch, beach, volcano and ocean vanished and were replaced by a small room decorated in classical Hexamon spareness. “All right.”

  Garry appeared in the middle of the room. “Hello, Karen.”

  “How are you?” She fingered the cool bowl of her wine-glass, both glad to see him—she had not blanked out her worry—and curiously irritated. But their quiet discord had gone on for so long, she did not want to let him know her emotions. That was her armor.

  “I’m fine. I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “I wondered if you were up here,” she said defensively, struggling to keep her voice mellow.

  “I wanted to talk to you before now, but I didn’t want to interrupt your conference.”

  “Please do,” she said. An image came to her mind of whom she wanted to be like now: the American actress of the early twentieth century, Bette Davis, cool and contentious, armored but desirable. The apartment pictors could not do that for her, however.

  “We need to speak with Suli Ram Kikura.”

  “She’s still in city memory, keeping the chickens from pecking at each other.”

  “Problems?”

  “It’s not going well, Garry.” She looked away from the image, noticed her finger actually in the wine, removed it, and set the glass down. “I’m resting. What about Mirsky? What’s happening?” There; the curiosity had escaped.

  “Have you been following the Nexus proceedings?”

  She shook her head.

  “There’s very big trouble coming.” He explained the situation.

  The time had come to shift gears; this was not strictly a personal call. Still, the shift did not come easily. “That doesn’t sound like the Nexus at all. Without consulting Earth?”

  “Mirsky’s told us some amazing things,” Lanier said, “and frankly, I don’t like the Nexus denying his request. I think reopening the Way, and leaving it open, is a very bad idea.”

  “Suli hasn’t heard his story?”

  “No.”

  She thought quickly, her conflicts temporarily suspended. They were almost a team again, working together on a problem. Something had changed about her husband. What had Mirsky done to him—to all of them? “All right. I’ll contact her in city memory and tell her it’s urgent. Then I’ll set up a meeting. Where are you?”

  “Nexus dome quarters.”

  “Mirsky…he is Mirsky?”

  “Yes.”

  That answer, unequivocal, brooked no argument; she knew Lanier better than to think he had come to such a judgment lightly. Somewhat to her surprise, she found she still trusted her husband’s judgment on these matters…perhaps on many other matters as well. Why was that surprising? She did not dislike Garry; she disliked the thought of losing him forever. Their discord and separation were certainly not based on distrust or aversion.

  “This is very big, then.” A note of wonder and speculation crept into her voice.

  “It is indeed,” Lanier said. “And Karen…I don’t want our problems to get lost in it.”

  Her face flushed. “What do you mean?”

  “I need to talk about other things, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “When there’s time.”

  “Fine,” she said tightly.

  “I love you,” Lanier said, and his image faded.

  Completely against her will, and to her surprise, her breath caught in her chest and she had to struggle to hold back tears. It had been years since he told her that.

  “Damn him,” she said.

  35

  Rhita

  Before the memory of her capture was lost to her completely, bleached away by the false Rhodian sun, she asked the youth, “Where are my friends?”

  “Preserved,” the youth replied. She tried to ask more about them but could not. Her thoughts were restricted into certain channels. With a wrenching awareness of the falseness of this place, she forced herself to think, I am not free. She felt a shiver of horror. She could not be among her grandmother’s people. The sophē would have told her about such horrors…

  Who had her, then?

  She did not understand how such things could be; how could she be someplace and yet not be there? This was not a dream, however devious; it did not feel like a dream. Whatever it was, they took it from her, but it was not hers; she did not control it.

  She walked through the stone house where Patrikia had lived, bare feet stroking cool tile with each step, peering into this room, then the next, aware somehow that they wished to know more about the sophē but unwilling to tell them. Or show them. She was blocking her grandmother from her mind. How long could she do this? They seemed very strong.

  She decided she would ignore the youth. He did not answer her questions fully. There was no way of knowing whether the little he did tell her was the truth.

  A flash of anger and scattered confused thinking made her vision darken and Patrikia’s library room fade. When her vision cleared, the Objects lay on the floor around her, clavicle revealed in its wooden case.

  “This is a device for passing from the Way to other worlds. You attracted our attention by using it on the gate.”

  Rhita glanced over her shoulder to see the youth behind her. His face was still indistinct.

  “Where did you get it?” he asked.

  “You know that already.”

  “Where did your grandmother get it?”

  She closed her eyes and still saw the clavicle before her and felt the unanswered question.

  “We are not going to torture you,” the youth said. “We need your information to take you where you want to go.”

  “I want to go home,” she said softly. “My real home.”

  “You did not make this device. Your grandmother did not make it. Your world has no use for such things. We are curious how it came to be here. Did you once commune with the Way, far back in history, perhaps?”

  “My grandmother. I told you.” What had she told them? And how often?

  “Yes. We believe you.”

  “Then don’t ask me again and again!” She turned on the youth, anger again dimming her vision. Each time she got angry, it seemed they knew more; yet she was not actually trying to hide anything from them. She surmised she could not hide facts if they were capable of making her think she was on Rhodos when she wasn’t. I should be nearly dead with fear.

  “There’s no reason for you to be afraid. You are not dead, you are not injured.”

  The youth’s face suddenly became distinct, as if a shadow not of darkness but of ignorance had passed. He had regular features, black eyes, black hair and a slight growth of beard. He might have been a Rhodian beach boy. “I take this shape because you are not familiar with us.”

  “You’re not human?”

  “No. We come in many different forms, unlike your people. We are all unified, but…” He grinned. “Different. So please accept me in this more pleasant shape for the time being.”

  They seemed to have changed tactics, or perhaps learned how to make their deception even more convincing. Rhita turned away from him and from the vision of the Objects. “Please leave me alone. Let me go home.”

  “I will not conceal truth from you. Your home is undergo
ing changes now, to make it more efficient.”

  Rhita looked at her hands. She wanted to shiver, but she couldn’t; she could, however, feel more anger. She restrained herself. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “We’ve laid claim to your Earth. I suppose it’s time we drop this pretense and acquaint ourselves more fully. Are you prepared for that?”

  “I—”

  “Let me explain. This is a kind of waking dream, made up by our investigators to introduce you gently to your new life. I am a superior officer among the investigators. I have just arrived to speak with you. Until now, you’ve been speaking with an inferior officer. I am more acquainted with your people than he was. Is that clear?”

  “I think so,” Rhita said.

  “You’ve been in this state for several years of your time. Since there’s nothing you can do to hurt us, and since we have enough information from you for the time being, there’s no need for pretense, so I’ve decided we will let you awaken. When you are ready, you will be able to use your real body, and the environment you see around you will be real. Understood?”

  “I don’t want any of this,” she said. Years? That took a moment to sink in; the despair she felt spreading through her thoughts was a dark, freezing thing. She realized she might as well have been dead from the moment she boarded the beecraft; perhaps from the moment she had left Rhodos. She—and Patrikia—had opened a true Pandora’s box; she still had no idea a what had emerged. Years.

  I am too young. How could I have known? Patrikia did not know. Is the world dead, too?

  The cold sensation passed and she felt a series of small aches. The illusion of Rhodos and Patrikia’s home faded. She opened her eyes and found herself lying on a hard, warm surface beneath a square of light the color of embers. The light slowly dimmed. Her skin felt sore, as if it had been sanded; indeed, looking at her arms, they seemed flushed, sunburned.

  A man-shaped shadow stood just beyond the reach of the light. An olive-colored darkness surrounded them, the hue of a dream before it begins, or after it ends. She did not feel well.

  “I’m sick,” she murmured.

  “That will pass,” the shadow assured her.

  “Are you a Jart?” she asked, trying to sit up. She had not voiced that question until now because she had hoped never to have to know the answer. Now, hopeless, she faced the shadow.

  “I’ve tried to decide what that word means. It’s possible we are; but you’ve never encountered Jarts, nor did your grandmother, who told you about them. The word does not connect with us; the humans your grandmother seems to have known could not have spoken our true name…They might have known a name used by others, not human. The answer, at any rate, may be yes.”

  “She told me you fought humans.”

  The figure in shadow did not directly respond to this. “We are many and varied, and we can change our shapes if we wish, change our functions.”

  Rhita felt better, physically if not mentally. The despair faded with an odd sensation of hot chill that diminished with the overhead glow, now cinnamon. Other lights came on, vague and soothing, in the olive gloom.

  “Am I on Earth?”

  “You are within what you call the Way.”

  Her breath shuddered and she suppressed a moan. That meant nothing and everything to her. Could she believe them? “Are my friends alive?”

  “They are here with you.”

  That, she decided, was evasive.

  “Are they alive?” she asked again.

  The shadow stepped forward, its face falling within a nimbus of light. She shrank back, sensing very strongly this was not a dream or an illusion, but a physical being. The face was masculine but without much character, smooth-skinned, narrow-eyed. Not a face she would look at twice in a crowd. It was neither godlike, nor some monstrous horror. It wore a jacket and pair of pants similar to that worn by the soldiers she had traveled with…years ago, if that wasn’t a lie.

  “Would you like to speak with them?”

  “Yes,” she said, breathing more rapidly. She held her hand up to her face; it felt the same. She had not been changed; why should she expect such a thing? Because her captor looked human?

  “All of them?” the Jart asked.

  She looked down for a moment, lips moving. “Demetrios and Oresias,” she said.

  “Allow us some time, please. We discard nothing.”

  36

  Thistledown

  “I hadn’t expected to see you again,” Suli Ram Kikura picted at Olmy, her symbols cool blues and greens. Olmy smiled enigmatically and followed Korzenowski and Mirsky into the corporeal meeting area reserved for Ram Kikura’s fellowship project. Befitting the Terrestrials’ home surroundings, the room had been decorated in mid-twentieth-century industrial boardroom—spare metal and wood chairs, a long wooden table, bare bone-white walls, with a display board on one end. “Excuse the primitive conditions,” Ram Kikura apologized in speech.

  “Brings back memories,” Lanier said, catching the chill between the advocate and Olmy. Olmy seemed to take it in stride; but then, Lanier had never seen him nonplussed. “I spent many a long hour in rooms that looked like this.”

  “Our Earth guests are still in city memory. We’re trying to repair a complete fiasco,” Ram Kikura said. “Karen will join us in a few minutes. From what she tells me, some unholy alliances have been forged the past couple of days. The Nexus has decided to re-open the Way?” She pointedly avoided Olmy’s eyes.

  Korzenowski stood by one of the chairs, fingering it with a puzzled expression. “Yes,” he said, coming out of his brief reverie with a quick blink. “A Nexus advisory subject to Hexamon voting. Precints and Thistledown only.”

  “I presume they’re invoking the Recovery laws. We should have wiped those from the statute books years ago.” Ram Kikura seemed more radical and bitter to Lanier than when they had first met. Age and the Recovery had worn on her, as well, yet she did not appear any older than when he had first met her. She had kept her style and looks largely unchanged the past four decades.

  Olmy completed a slow walk around the table, his gait smooth and leonine. “You’ve absorbed Ser Mirsky’s story?”

  Ram Kikura nodded. “As much as I care to. It’s hideous.”

  Mirsky’s eyes widened in surprise. “Hideous?” he asked.

  “The ultimate pollution. The ultimate sacrilege. I was born and raised in the Way, and yet now…” She looked as if she might spit. “To open the Way again, and keep it open, is more than folly. It’s evil.”

  “Let’s not get extreme,” Korzenowski said mildly.

  “I beg the Engineer’s pardon,” Ram Kikura said.

  “You’re being shrill,” Olmy picted privately to her. She turned on him with a stone-heavy glare. “These men are here to ask your help. So am I. There’s no sense being self-righteous before you know what we need. Or what we believe.”

  This message passed in an eye’s blink. Lanier only knew that Olmy had picted with her; he was not in the line of picting, of course, and did not consider himself adept at translating picts anyway. Ram Kikura’s shoulders slumped and she stared at the carpet, eyes closed, taking a deep breath.

  “My apologies. Ser Olmy reminds me of my manners. I happen to be passionate about these things. Seeing the aftermath of the Death gave me a strong impression of what our hubris can do.”

  “Please remember, until now I have opposed the reopening of the Way,” Korzenowski said. “But the pressures on the Hexamon are enormous. And Ser Mirsky’s return—”

  “Excuse me, Ser Korzenowski,” Mirsky interrupted. “I am curious why she calls my story hideous.”

  “You tell us the Way clogs up our universe like a snake,” Ram Kikura said.

  “Not precisely. It makes a project carried out by our very distant descendants more difficult, perhaps impossible. But the Way itself is not thought of by these being as ‘hideous.’ They regard it with wonder. That such a tiny community, traveling between worlds, still locked
into the realm of matter, should accomplish so much in so short a time…this is unprecedented. Constructs similar to the Way exist in other universes, but none of them were created by beings so early in their development. To our descendants, the Way stands out as the Egyptian pyramids did in our history, or Stonehenge. If they had their preference, it would be preserved as a monument to early brilliance. But that is not possible. It must be dismantled in a particular fashion…and that can only begin here.”

  Ram Kikura’s anger faded. She regarded him with deep interest. “You aren’t concerned with our petty politics, are you?” she asked.

  Mirsky rapped his fingers on the table, an impatient gesture Lanier found intriguing. “Politics…never petty to those caught up in it. I am concerned only insofar as politics might prevent dismantling the Way.”

  Karen entered the conference area and stepped forward to kiss her husband. The kiss was short but apparently sincere; there was no need, she seemed to tell him, for personal problems to come to the fore now. Nevertheless, he took her hand and squeezed it.

  “The timetable is short,” he said, forcibly interlacing his fingers through hers. Her jaw tightened and she glanced around at the others, wondering what they were making of this, quickly seeing that social nuances and speculations were the last things on anybody’s mind.

  Lanier did not loosen his grip. “Ser Korzenowski?”

  “The Way could be opened in less than six months. I’m afraid Ser Mirsky’s story drove a wedge into the Nexus, and the neo-Geshels used that wedge to open a wide split. The Nexus will advise a permanent re-opening. Nobody doubts what will happen then—if the Jarts aren’t waiting for us, I mean. There’ll be a rush of entrepreneur legislation—permits to open ‘test’ gates, some of which of course will lead us to Talsit concessions…And if we establish commerce with the Talsit again, we’ll never shut the gate down. The Talsit are damnably seductive salesmen, and besides, many Hexamon citizens need their goods too much right now. There’s an air of desperation…. Ser Olmy?”