Eternity

by Greg Bear

  Olmy told the Jart about human childhood: education, entertainment, choosing and receiving one’s first implants, the libraries; he did not tell the Jart about the Thistledown or what it was, and he carefully monitored his visual information so that the Jart could not see the starship’s gently curving chambers. He tried to provide the illusion that he, too, had been born and raised on a planet.

  In time, he hoped to be able to penetrate the Jart’s analogous lies. After all, he was the captor; he had the upper hand. Perhaps later, when he had become completely sure of his mastery, he would tell the Jart nothing but truth, and all of the truth.

  For the moment, however, they circled around complete disclosure…

  Outside, the Hexamon worked steadily toward its goals. Olmy sometimes accessed a public library terminal away from his hideout, using his tracer to penetrate Hexamon propaganda, which had become oppressively thick. The Hexamon seemed to be hiding from itself, guilty for its actions. It needed to convince itself again and again.

  Olmy was not encouraged by such subterfuge. It led to blunders and bad judgment. All of his worst suspicions and fears about the current Hexamon leadership were being realized.

  After the mens publica mandate, the re-opening was on schedule. The defenses were nearly complete. The Way could be reconnected within a month, perhaps less; citizens on the orbiting bodies were enthusiastic but nervous.

  On Earth, the Terrestrial Senate had been placed in emergency recess. The senators and corpreps were sequestered, as were a number of territorial governors.

  Ram Kikura was still kept under house arrest and in a communications null in Axis Euclid.

  Olmy received this information with grim resignation. There had always been the potential; now the potential was actual. The re-opening had become an obsession, and nothing would stand in its way—not even the honor and tradition of a thousand years.

  In time, he might come to respect the Jarts, with their single-minded purity, more than his own people, mired in hypocrisy and confusion.

  He returned to his study.

  49

  Earth

  “Was Pavel Mirsky here?” Lanier asked as Karen turned him over and checked the flotation fields beneath him. She straightened and gave him an odd look, puzzled and irritated at once.

  “No,” she said. “You’ve been dreaming.”

  He swallowed and nodded: probably so. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “It wasn’t sleep,” she said. “You’ve been reintegrating. They added the last repair microbes to your blood two days ago. You almost died…” She rolled him back onto the fields. “About two months ago.”

  “Oh.”

  She stood above him, face stern. “You almost did it.”

  He smiled weakly. “I don’t remember much about it. Was I trying to find you, when it happened?”

  “You were sitting on your chair on the porch. It was cold outside. You…I found you tipped over in the chair.” She shook her head slowly. “Sometimes I hated you. Sometimes…”

  “I didn’t know it was coming,” he said.

  “Garry, your father.”

  “I’m not him.”

  “You acted as if you wanted to die.”

  “Maybe I did,” he said quietly. “But I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “You wanted me to go with you, perhaps?” She sat on the side of the bed, on the edge of the soft purple sleep fields. “I’m not ready for that.”

  “No.”

  “You look old enough to be my father.”

  “Thanks.”

  She took his jaw in one hand and gently twisted his head to one side, touching a bump at the base of his neck. “They put a temporary implant in you. You can remove it later if you want. But right now, you’re a ward of the Hexamon.”

  “Why? They lied to me…” He lifted his head and reached up, feeling the tiny bump himself. So there it is. I’m angry…very angry. And I’m relieved, too.

  “The Hexamon wants you alive. Senator Ras Mishiney has been made the temporary administrator of New Zealand and North Australia…he ordered you be kept alive, and that an implant be installed whatever your feelings, so his job won’t be made any harder. You’re a hero, Garry. If you die, who knows what Old Natives will imagine?”

  “You let them do it?”

  “They didn’t tell me until after. They didn’t give me any choice.” Her voice softened, and her lip began to tremble. “I told them what you wanted. They did what they said they’d do at first, and then Ras Mishiney came…a sympathy visit, he said.” She wiped her palm across a damp cheek. “He ordered them to put in the implant. He said it must stay until the crisis is over.”

  Lanier lay back on the fields and closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I thought you were dead.” She stood, then sat down again and covered both her cheeks with her hands, eyes squeezed tight shut. “I thought we could never resolve…what…”

  He reached up to her arm but she shrugged his hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, reaching for her arm again. She did not refuse his touch this time. “I’ve been selfish.”

  “You’ve been a man of principle,” she said. “I respected you and I was afraid for myself.”

  “A man of principle can be a selfish man,” Lanier said.

  She shook her head and took his hand in hers. “You made me feel guilty. After all we’ve done for the Earth, not to share…its handicaps.”

  He looked at the bedroom window. It was night. “What’s been happening?” he asked.

  “They’re not telling us everything. I think they’re close to reopening.”

  He tried to get out of bed, but the long convalescence had weakened him, and he gave up the effort. “I’d like to talk to the administrator,” he said. “If I’m important enough to keep alive, maybe I’m important enough to talk to.”

  “He won’t talk to any of us. Not really talk. He’s full of platitudes. I’ve come to hate them so, Garry.”

  What a shock it must have been, Lanier thought, sitting on the porch, wrapped in blankets even though the air was warming. Summer. The Earth was going through its cycles, raw and uncontrolled and beautiful and ugly. What a shock to come from the perfect, controlled, rational environment of the Way and descend like angels into the squalor of the past.

  He lifted his notepad and scrolled the display through what he had written. Scowling, dissatisfied, he deleted a few paragraphs of obfuscation and tried to remember the words he had just pieced together in his head.

  They don’t need us, he wrote. Everything they need is in the Stone—the Thistledown—and when they re-open the Way, once again they’ll have more than they need.

  “If not more than they can handle,” he murmured, fingers trembling slightly above the notepad keys.

  Lanier had decided the time had come to write down all he had lived through. If he was to be kept isolated from the play of history, then he could record what he had already experienced. His memory seemed sharper after the reconstruction, a sensation he luxuriated in while at the same time experiencing more than a twinge of guilt. This was something he could do, under arrest or not; in time, perhaps what he recorded would influence people. If there was any profundity left in him.

  What a shock, he began again, to find the past full of people who knew nothing of psychological medicine, people with minds as bent and warped and distorted (he deleted bent and warped) as nature and circumstance could (he stopped, having written himself into a corner. Started over.)…minds as distorted as the bodies of people in ancient times, gnomish, shriveled, withered, ugly, clinging to their ragged personalities, cherishing their warps and diseases, fearful of some mandated, standard mental health that might make them all alike. People too ignorant to see that there are as many varieties of healthy thinking as there are diseased; perhaps more. Freedom lay in control and correction, the newly formed Terrestrial Hexamon knew, yet what a task lay before them! Tricks and subterfu
ge, outright lies, were necessary in a constant struggle against the ravages of the Death as well as the causes of that disaster. And just as I was broken on the wheel of ministering to this misery, so the Hexamon in time wished for…

  He paused. What? A return to the good old days? To the world they were in fact more familiar with, more comfortable with, despite their philosophies and stated goals? The Sundering had been the decision of a moment, in Hexamon time, just as now the re-opening was. Spikes in the smooth graph of Hexamon history. Points of cataclysmic fracture in a glassy matrix.

  All very human, despite the centuries of Talsit and psychological medicine. Even a healthy, sane culture, with healthy, sane individuals, could not rise above strife and discord; it was simply more polite, less senselessly destructive and horrifying.

  Karen had said she hated them now; Lanier could not bring himself to share that emotion. Whatever his anger, his disappointment, he still admired them. They had finally admitted to a fact that had been obvious all along. Humans of the past—Old Natives—could never comfortably mesh with humans of the future. Certainly not in a matter of decades, and not with the reduced resources available.

  With a suspicious eye, he tracked a white speck flying above the green hills to the south, watching it pass behind trees and out of his line of sight. He glanced at his watch. “Karen,” he called. “They’re coming.”

  She pushed through the screen door, carrying a tray of repotted plants. “Supplies?”

  “I’d guess,” he answered.

  “How kind.” She didn’t sound bitter now; they were resigned to being pushed out of the way. “Maybe we can coax some straight news out of whomever it is.”

  The small shuttle came to a frozen hover above the small square of garden and grassy yard in front of the cabin. A traction field touched the ground, extending from the craft’s nose hatch, and a young neo-Geshel homorph in black descended. They had never seen him before. Lanier gathered up his blankets and threw them over the chair arm, standing with notepad in hand.

  “Hello,” the young man said. He seemed oddly familiar in manner if not in looks. “My name is Tapi Ram Olmy. Ser Lanier?”

  “Hello,” Lanier said. “My wife, Karen.”

  The young man smiled. “I’ve brought supplies, as scheduled.” He glanced around, still smiling but apparently ill at ease. “Pardon my awkwardness. I’m a newborn. I passed my incarnation exams three months ago. The real world is…well, it’s vivid.”

  “Would you like to come in?” Karen invited.

  “Yes. Thank you.” As he climbed up the steps to the porch, he removed a palm-length silver wand from a pocket in his black suit and ran his finger along a glowing green line on one side. “Your house isn’t monitored,” he said. “There are only monitors on the perimeter.”

  “They don’t care what we say or do,” Karen said, no edge in her voice, only weary acquiescence.

  “Well, that’s an advantage. I bring a package from my father.”

  “You’re Suli Ram Kikura’s and Olmy’s son?” Lanier asked.

  “That I am. Mother nobody can reach—they’re very afraid of her. But she’ll be free soon. My father is hiding, not because they’re after him…I don’t know why he’s hiding, truly. But he thought you might like a clear, clean report of what’s happening on Thistledown.” The young man looked solemn. “I could get in a fair amount of trouble. But my father took chances in his career, too.”

  “They designed well,” Lanier said, translating a Hexamon picted compliment into English.

  “Thank you.” Ram Olmy handed the old-fashioned memory cubes to Lanier. “You can probably spend a few weeks reading what’s in there. No picts, just text. Father had it translated from picts where necessary. I can give a summary…”

  “Please,” Lanier said. “Have a seat.” He indicated a winged-back chair near the hearth. Ram Olmy sat, clasping his hands in front of him.

  “The Engineer is going to create a number of virtual universes tonight. To fish out the end of the Way. I think you’ll be able to see the side effects. It’s going to be spectacular.”

  Lanier nodded, not sure he was up to spectacular wonders just now.

  “The defenses are in place. They haven’t been tested, but soon. I’m assigned to one of the test crews.”

  “Good luck.”

  “I appreciate your irony, Ser Lanier,” Ram Olmy said. “If all goes well, the Way will be reconnected in a week, and the first test opening will be within two weeks. I hope to be there when it’s opened.”

  “Should be quite a moment.”

  Lanier hadn’t taken a seat. Karen stood behind him. Ram Olmy looked up at them, eyes calm but body still not at ease. He moved his hands to the chair arms and then clasped them again. Like a young colt, Lanier thought.

  “I have a message from Konrad Korzenowski, too,” Ram Olmy said. “Ser Mirsky hasn’t been seen anywhere. The Engineer told me to tell you, ‘The avatar has fled.’”

  Lanier nodded. Then he turned and said to Karen, “We’re making the boy uncomfortable, Let’s sit.” They pulled up chairs. Karen offered refreshments, but Ram Olmy demurred.

  “I’m built on slightly different lines than my father. Not as efficient, but I don’t need Talsit devices.” He held out his hands, obviously proud of his new material form.

  Lanier smiled. Tapi reminded him of Olmy, and that memory was pleasant. Karen seemed less taken by this breath of Hexamon wind.

  “Why is your father in hiding?”

  “I think he’s expressing some kind of disapproval, but I truly don’t know. We’re all embarrassed by your isolation here. I don’t know of anybody in the defense and protection league who approves of the way Earth’s being treated…”

  “But you see it as a necessity,” Karen said.

  Ram Olmy regarded her with steady, clear eyes. “No, Ser Lanier. I don’t. The Emergency Laws put responsibility for decisions on the president and Speical Nexus Council. They give us the orders. Disobeying the orders, under these same rules, means loss of incarnation privileges and direct downloading to city memory. That would put me back where I started.”

  “How did you pull this duty?” Lanier asked.

  “Excuse me…pull?”

  “Get this duty.”

  “I requested it. Nobody saw anything to object to. I said you were friends of my father, and of the Engineer, and that I could carry a message from the Engineer to you.”

  “They aren’t secluded?”

  “No. My father’s hiding, but he hasn’t broken any laws. They can’t make you take command positions. That would be ridiculous.”

  “Korzenowski volunteered?” Karen asked, her interest growing.

  “I’m not sure what his motives are. Sometimes he seems quite strange, but he’s getting his work done. So I hear. The Special Nexus Committe can’t control all communication links; there’s considerable gossip on Thistledown. I see him very seldom, and his partial gave me this message.”

  “We appreciate your bringing it to us,” Lanier said.

  “My pleasure. My mother and father mentioned you often. They said you were among the best Old Natives. I also wanted to say…” He stood abruptly. “I have to be getting back now. The supplies are unloaded. When this is over, when the Way is re-opened, the Hexamon feels it can finally have the resources to finish our work on Earth. I look forward to that, and I’d like to volunteer now, to work with you on any project you might lead. Both of you. It would be my honor, and both my mother and father would be very proud.”

  Lanier shook his head slowly. “This will never be over,” he said. “Not in the way the Hexamon imagines.”

  “Mirsky’s warning?” Ram Olmy asked.

  “Perhaps. And abuse of trust,” Lanier replied. “The Hexamon will have a lot of patching to do.”

  Ram Olmy sighed. “We’ve all listened to the testimony. Nobody knows what to make of it. The Special Nexus Committee says it’s a forgery.”

  Lanier’s face flushed
. “You must have your mother’s and father’s brains, if they mixed you together out of their own personalities. What do you think?”

  “He’s caught up in the adventure, Garry,” Karen said. Her attitude had softened. “Don’t be harsh on him.”

  “Mirsky was no sham,” Lanier continued. “He was here, and he convinced the Engineer, and your father, I’m fairly sure, and your mother. His warning was serious.”

  “Where is he, then, Ser?”

  “I don’t know,” Lanier said.

  “I’d be interested in meeting him, if he returns.”

  “If he returns. What if someone or something more powerful than Mirsky takes notice of the Hexamon’s intransigence?” Lanier stood slowly, more agitated than he wished to appear. “Thank you for visiting us. Tell whomever is interested that we are well. I am recovering. Our attitudes have not changed. If anything, they have hardened. Tell your superiors this for us.”

  “Yes, Ser. If the occasion arises.” He thanked Karen for her hospitality, locked eyes with Lanier, and nodded. “Good-by.”

  “Star, Fate and Pneuma be with us all,” Lanier said.

  They escorted the young man to the front yard, where remotes had finished the unloading and were now tracting back into their holds in the craft’s underside. Ram Olmy boarded and the craft rose quickly, spinning about to head west against the fading skyglow.

  Karen put her arm around him and kissed his cheek. “Well said.”

  “He seems to be a good fellow,” Lanier said. “Still, he’s one of them. Heart and soul.”

  “His father’s son, more than his mother’s.”

  Lanier kissed the top of her head. Twilight was blending into night. He looked up expectantly and shivered. “What magic is the old wizard going to work this evening?” “I’ll bring out the blankets,” Karen said. “And the heater.”

  For a moment, standing alone in the yard with the stars coming out above him, Lanier did not know whether it was good or horrible to be alive. He could not stop the gooseflesh from rising on his arms. This is real, he reminded himself. I’m awake.