Eternity

by Greg Bear

  She half-expected Typhōn to do something to her, to fix her and banish the spell of dizziness. But he simply stood behind her, keeping her from falling on her back. For a moment, she restrained an impulse to heave, and then shut her eyes tightly, deciding darkness would be better for her health.

  After a time, the dizziness faded and she felt better. “If you are thirsty,” Typhōn said, “drink this.” She opened her eyes and saw a glass cup of clear liquid in his hand. She took it and sipped cautiously. Water; nothing more, as far as she could tell. This disappointed her. She had expected some elixir. Of course, where the escort had found a cup of water in the bubble was a puzzle…. She imagined him opening a hole in his body and drawing it out, or perhaps spitting into the glass. She shut her eyes again, fighting another rising plume of nausea.

  Rhita used the railing to regain her feet, waving off his hand, and hastily returned the half-full cup. Partly to distract herself from the panorama outside, partly to subdue her queasiness, she directed her full attention to what he did with the glass.

  He held it. Nothing more. Shivering, she turned back to the view. They had dropped much closer to the surface now, and flew—guided by the green lines—toward a white tower. Trying to judge scale, she decided the tower was at least as tall as the Pharos at Alexandreia, and much more massive. But the scale of the Way dwarfed all structures.

  Rhita forced herself to lean her head back and look up. Her neck protested. Her lips parted and she sighed, despite herself. Far behind and above them, the triangular prism hung huge and blunt and graceless in the center of the pearly ribbon of light, like a long black crystal suspended in milky water.

  Something much farther down the throat of the Way, a blinking beacon, caught her attention. She shielded her eyes, although the tubelight was not excessively bright, and squinted to focus on a moving speck. It, too, was within the ribbon of light, but many stadia away, moving rapidly in their direction. She jerked her neck back as it reached a point just above them, saw that it was another huge rainbow prism, and realized it would collide with the first prism. Twisting about, she gasped as the prisms struck like trains on a rail. For a moment, they were one long green mass, and then the second prism passed through the first without damage to either, continuing its travel unimpaired in the opposite direction.

  Patrikia had never described anything like that.

  “I feel numb,” she said, glancing resentfully at Typhōn.

  “It was your choice to see it all,” the escort said mildly. “None of me take this route often, themselves.”

  She pondered that syntax for a moment, decided the view was less disturbing than what she suspected Typhōn meant, and faced forward again.

  There were no obvious entrances to the tower. Nevertheless, the bubble passed straight through the rounded wall of a stacked disk, crossing an enclosed arc-shaped space filled with floating polyhedrons, and then through another wall. The bubble discarded its panoply of green lines, and descended along a leaf-green shaft toward what might have been a perfectly clear lens of glass. Distorted by the lens were sea-blues and sky-blues and light browns and cloud-grays; all the normal colors of her home. She held her breath for a moment, hoping against hope that the nightmare would end.

  “This is the gate to Gaia,” her escort said. “A prior gate was opened here. Our gates are not usually so constricted in shape, but the prior geometry takes precedence.”

  “Oh,” Rhita said. Free with information that meant next to nothing to her…

  As they fell toward the surface of the lens, the color of the shaft reddened, then abruptly shifted to white.

  The bubble struck the lens and they fell through. Below lay a coastline, gray ocean under cloud shadows, blue ocean in patches of brilliant sunlight.

  Rhita could hardly breathe. “Where are we?”

  “This is your world,” Typhōn said.

  She knew that; and it was no dream, either. “Where on Gaia?”

  “Not far from your home, I understand—I’ve never visited here in any self or capacity.”

  “I want to go to…” She looked up and saw blue sky and an indistinct shimmer over their heads: the gate they had just passed through. “Can we go to Rhodos?”

  Typhōn considered her request for a moment. “It would not consume much more energy. This project nears its limits, however. There will have to be results soon.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “This line of investigation. You must provide results soon.”

  “You know everything I know,” Rhita said, near tears, utterly exhausted. “What can I do for you?”

  “Lead us to those who built your clavicle. Give us clues. But—” He held up his hand as she was about to protest, “I realize you do not know these things. Still, there is some hope you can reveal more by your actions, or by your presence—the clavicle may be sought by others than ourselves. Only you can operate it. You still have some value in your active form.”

  “What about my…companions?”

  “They will be brought here if it makes you more comfortable.”

  “It would,” she said. “Please.”

  Typhōn smiled. “Your forms of social appeasement are wonderful. Such simplicity masking such aggression. The request is made; they should meet us at Rhodos, if we do not exceed the energy budget.”

  “I’m not sure I can stand here much longer. I’m very tired.”

  Typhōn encouraged her to squat on the platform. “You will not be clumsy in my eyes,” he said.

  With a grimace, she not only squatted; she lay down on her stomach, peering over the edge. “Are we going to Rhodos?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  A green line appeared from nearby clouds and spread out before the bubble into a radiance of grasping curves. In a cage again, the bubble transported them high above the ocean. She could not tell in which direction of the compass they were heading.

  “Am I the first human you’ve ever studied?” she asked.

  “No,” Typhōn answered. “My selves studied dozens of humans from this world before investigating your preserved record.”

  “Do you know everything about us?” Anger was her dominant emotion now; she bit off her words, hoping the sour edge was not lost to the escort.

  “No. You still have many subtleties, many things to study. But I may not be allowed to study you to completion. There are higher tasks, and my number of selves is fully occupied.”

  “You keep saying that,” Rhita said wearily. “My ‘selves.’ I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “I am not an individual. I am actively stored—”

  “Like grain in a barrel?” Rhita asked sarcastically.

  “Like a memory in your own head,” Typhōn said. “I am actively stored in the flaw. We can induce resonances in the flaw and store huge amounts of information—literally worlds of information. Is that clear to you?”

  “No,” she admitted. “How can there be more than one of you?”

  “Because my patterns, my self, can be duplicated endlessly. I can be merged with other selves of differing designs and abilities. Various effectuators can be built for us—machines or ships or more rarely, bodies. I do work when any of my selves are required.”

  “You’re trained to take care of strangers?”

  “In a sense. I made a study of beings similar to you when we fought with them in the Way. I was an individual then, biologically based, in a shape similar to my original birth-form.”

  Her grandmother had told her what little she knew about the Jart Wars. To a young girl, they had not meant much—meaningless wonders in a weave of fantastic stories. She wished she had listened more closely.

  “What was your original birth-form?”

  “Not human, not this shape at all.”

  “But you did have your own shape once.”

  “No. Part of me did. I have since been combined with others, stirred together.” He twirled an extended finger slowly. Rhita frowned at
him over her shoulder. All my questions keep me from the truth I’ll have to face.

  “I’m confused again,” she said. “You tell me one thing, then another.”

  Typhōn knelt beside her, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. A very human gesture. Was his face gaining more character?

  “Your language doesn’t have the right word-groups. All sound-carried language is inadequate.”

  “You don’t talk to each other,” she said.

  “Not in words, or using sounds. Not usually, at any rate.”

  “Would you kill me if you were ordered to?”

  “I will not be ordered to kill you or anybody, if by that you mean destroy your patterns. That is what you would call a crime, a sin.”

  Enough for the moment. She rolled back on her stomach. Below them, the ocean stretched blue-green, shallow, with pillars of rock sticking up like stumps of trees. She did not know this place.

  Yet they were supposed to be near Rhodos. “Near” might mean different things to a Jart; they could speed down the Way and exit through gates in soap bubbles, after all.

  More pillars appeared. Each was covered by a cap of gold that took the shape of the rocks, as if painted on. No vegetation, no boats in the water, just this cloud-shadowed and pillar-specked barrenness.

  “Could I smell the air?” she asked.

  “No,” Typhōn said bluntly.

  “Why not?”

  “It is no longer healthy for you. There are organisms and biological machines on your world now that travel by air, too small to see. They are raising Gaia to a higher level of efficiency.”

  “Nobody can live out there?”

  Typhōn seemed to commiserate. “Not of your kind,” he said.

  She felt weak again. They had spread disease around Gaia—was that what the escort meant? Death and defilement. Nobody could live—

  “Anywhere? Can people live anywhere?”

  “There are no humans on Gaia. They have been stored for further study.”

  Now the hatred came. It jerked her head back, squeezing her vitals like a giant hand, pushing a scream out. She turned on Typhōn with fists raised. He made no effort to defend himself. She hit him as hard as she could, again and again, not weak feminine blows; she had never been raised to fear defending herself. Her fists deformed his face and her knees kicked dimples in his clothing. She seemed to be striking bread dough, warm and yielding. She continued to scream, pitching higher with each blow, grunting, saliva falling from her lips, eyes half-closed. Again and again. Striking, kicking, grabbing him by the neck and sticking her fingers into what might be flesh.

  Typhōn collapsed on the platform, face misshapen, eyes beaten shut, not bruised but simply warped, and she kicked him several more times until she felt a sparkling dark emptiness in her head. Staring up at the clouds outside the bubble, tears slick on her cheeks, her chin damp with spit, the rage gone but the legs and arms still trembling, Rhita began to creep back into control.

  She glanced down at the clothed mass that no longer seemed very human, her expression that of a panicked horse, pupils like pinpricks and nostrils wide, then grabbed the railing, feeling again as if she might vomit. Across the barren sea, she saw a low dark green outline above the horizon and the last hopeful part of her exulted. That was Rhodos; she would know it anywhere. The bubble was still speeding her toward home.

  Typhōn spoke behind her, voice undistorted by the injuries she had inflicted. “I may be exceeding my budget now,” he said.

  44

  Thistledown City

  President Farren Siliom entered the full Nexus chamber and proceeded to the podium. Olmy sat beside Korzenowski and Mirsky. They listened to his speech intently. Korzenowski’s expression was enigmatic; he knew the importance of this occasion as well as anybody in the chamber, but he expressed neither approval nor disapproval.

  Mirsky’s face was also bland, but in its blandness, Olmy thought, there might lie more threat to the Hexamon than ever posed by the Jarts. Olmy had come to accept Mirsky’s story completely, and now even judged the man—if he was a man—incapable of lying. The president doubtless agreed; Garabedian’s confirmation had weighed heavily in that judgment. Yet now the Nexus—and Farren Siliom, for irresistible political reasons—were committing themselves to a course of re-opening. They were committing political acts that could only serve to slice a gap between Earth and the orbiting bodies that might never heal.

  All native Terrestrials were being returned to the Earth, whatever their status on the orbiting bodies. The Hexamon was entering a period of Emergency. Under Emergency Laws forgotten since the Jart Wars, the president was assuming extraordinary powers. He now had one year in which to carry out his plans; after that time, because of his use of the Emergency Laws, he would be forbidden from ever holding political office again.

  He was guaranteeing the purity of the vote of the mens publica with a vengeance. If the vote was negative, he would resign. If it was positive, Thistledown’s sixth chamber could be refurbished, the Hexamon defense reestablished and the Way reopened within four months.

  Korzenowski had been formally ordered to see to the execution of the will of the mens publica. He could not refuse. To Olmy, he seemed resigned; perhaps more than resigned. Having been forced this far, Korzenowski might be shedding the last vestiges of the mask he had worn for four decades, a mask of interest only in the Recovered Earth and the Terrestrial Hexamon, the denial of all his genius and accomplishment for the greater good of his fellows…

  Shedding, or having the mask ripped from him, it might not matter which in the long run.

  Olmy had few doubts Korzenowski would carry out the Hexamon’s orders efficiently. The Way might be opened sooner even than the president expected.

  What Mirsky would do, he could not tell. Best not to worry about imponderables.

  Meanwhile, within Olmy himself, the Jart was revealing layer upon layer of everyday Jart life. The flow of information had turned into a true flood, perhaps a rupture.

  Thus far, he was managing to keep up with the tide. Already he was planning his briefing for the reorganized defense forces.

  Soon, following an agreement worked out between the Jart mentality and his partial, he would allow the Jart access to his eyes and ears. They could communicate more effectively if they understood each other better.

  There were some dangers in that, of course, but none worse than what he had already survived.

  It was more than a time of changes.

  The pace had now taken the proportions of revolution. The Sundering was about to be reversed.

  The president finished his presentation, and the dominant coalition of neo-Geshels applauded and picted complete approval. The president’s Naderite colleagues kept silent. Korzenowski turned to Mirsky. “My friend, I must do this work, whatever my beliefs.”

  Mirsky shrugged and nodded, as if either forgiving or dismissing the Engineer. “Things will work out,” he said with bland nonchalance. He glanced at Olmy and winked.

  45

  Thistledown, the Orbiting Precincts, and Earth

  Korzenowski lifted a lump of white dough and listened to its soft hiss in his hands. The lumps were remains of a failed attempt six years before to create a gate without the Way; the failure had been quiet, but decisive. Instead of creating a gate, he had created a new form of matter, quite inert, possessing no useful properties that he had found, so far. And he had spent the past six years searching…

  He laid the lump back in its pallet of black stone and straightened, surveying his laboratory, saying farewell. He would not be back for months, perhaps not ever.

  The results of the Hexamon mens publica vote had been tabulated and broadcast. By a two-thirds majority—more than he had expected—permanent re-opening had been mandated.

  Farren Siliom had no choice at all now.

  Korzenowski activated the robot sentries and gave final instructions to a partial. Should he not return, and should anyone come visiting, the partial w
ould be there to greet them.

  He was not reluctant to return to the sixth chamber and begin the refurbishing; in fact, he was eager. There was a small and persistent voice in him that either echoed or perhaps, in some way not clear, created that eagerness: the unquiet voice of that which integrated his reassembled self, the mystery of Patricia Luisa Vasquez.

  Korzenowski gathered up his small tools and journals, all that was necessary to begin work on the Way, and ordered the laboratory sealed. “Be good, now,” he instructed a cross-shaped sentry as he walked away from the domes. He paused at the boundary of the compound, frowning. It was certainly not in his character to address a remote; he treated them for what they were, useful machines.

  Surrounded by kilometer after kilometer of scrub and sand, the Engineer boarded the tractor that would take him to the train station in the second chamber city.

  Suli Ram Kikura’s partial argued persuasively that its original should be released from house arrest in Axis Euclid. The partial’s appeal was rejected by the City Memory auxiliary courts on the grounds that under Emergency Laws, all appeals had to be presented by corporeals. This was so ridiculous it did not even anger her; she was beyond anger, moving into sadness.

  In her apartment, Ram Kikura had known the partial would fail. This new Hexamon was not above making up the rules as it went along. To openly object to the re-opening was not so much dangerous now as it was extremely awkward, impolite in its extended sense of impolitic. For decades, Hexamon law and politics had been based upon awareness of boundaries beyond which lay chaos and disaster; the president and presiding minister, having accurately gauged the true spirit of the orbiting bodies, were now doing everything within their power to stay within the boundaries of their duty, yet also carry out the vote of the mens publica and the advisory of the Nexus. They also seemed grimly determined to demonstrate the extremes of this mandate, as if they wished to punish the Hexamon—even their ideological partners—for this onerous duty.

  She was not allowed access to any city memory; that meant she could not speak with Tapi, who would be born any hour now. She had not been allowed to speak with either Korzenowski or Olmy. They were on their best behavior, she had been told, and were cooperating fully with the Emergency Effort.