Eternity

by Greg Bear

The Seventh Chamber

  The bore hole was almost deserted this time: it contained only Korzenowski and two defense force observers in corporeal form. Shields were in place beyond the traction blister, ready to move into position between the bore hole and the link at the first sign of problems. Emergency overrides had been placed on certain projectors, to allow Korzenowski to destabilize the link and withdraw power from the connection, a more efficient and rapid way to cut all communication between the Way and Thistledown.

  Even with all the safeguards, Korzenowski was apprehensive. What would the Jarts do next? Something even more violent, something that could override all precautions?

  It was remarkably like playing chess with a masterful opponent, one’s life hanging in the balance.

  If the message of Olmy’s Jart had gotten through, there might be an entirely different reception. But he counted on nothing; the blaze of energy had come through the small link almost as soon as it was opened, and there was no way of telling whether any signal could have passed through, or if there had been anybody or anything ready to receive such a signal.

  He maneuvered himself before the console and placed his hands on the clavicle. He concentrated on this moment, and sank into the trance of superspace, experiencing all over again the glory and chaos and majesty of a search for the Way.

  He found it, much more easily than before. In the clavicle’s sensory simulation of environments that were not entirely real, much less comprehensible to human senses, he orbited around a segment of the Way, although there was no “outside” to the pipe-shaped universe, any more than there was an outside to any other universe.

  He quickly located a likely coordinate for a gate-like link.

  The clavicle and the sixth chamber made their necessary adjustments.

  Thistledown seemed insubstantial around Korzenowski, less than smoke, a dream from a past life.

  A spot of light appeared beyond the blister, like a new star, not very bright. Korzenowski instructed remotes to push a probe through and investigate the environment beyond.

  No energies slashed out; the gate-like link was stable and unimpeded. The remotes gave him a visual picture from within the Way, just centimeters above the link.

  The Way was empty in this vicinity, and for hundreds of kilometers north and south. Radar signals probed rapidly south, and returned just as rapidly, telling him his gate had been opened a distance of one thousand kilometers from the cauterized end of the Way.

  The Way was empty in that direction, and to the north, as well, for at least five hundred thousand kilometers.

  Korzenowski broadcast the Jart’s signal once again through the link, paused for several seconds and then repeated it continuously. There was no response.

  But the emptiness might be response enough…might, in Jart manners, be an exceedingly cordial invitation.

  “We have a beachhead,” Korzenowski picted to the defense force observers. “The Way is empty to at least five ex five.”

  He removed the remotes and severed the gate-like link. It had been previously agreed that under this circumstance, he was to go ahead and attempt a full link, to connect the Way to the seventh chamber.

  Defense forces were already marshaling there, ready to secure the Hexamon’s advantage.

  Korzenowski rested for several minutes, steeled himself, and began the re-opening of the Way.

  The dot of light formed again, extended its petals outward, filled the void beyond the open seventh chamber with a garden of intricate, elegant flowers, the tortured world-lines of a haze of half-real universes surrounding status geometry. The flowers dimmed and were pushed aside.

  At the edges of the seventh chamber, the color of bronze became apparent. Faster than his unaided eye could follow, the Way filled in the void with its complete presence.

  The Engineer kept his place at the center of the blister, linked to the clavicle, waiting for the final evidence of his success: the lengthening of the Way’s central singularity, the flaw, to compensate for the Way’s new condition as an adjunct of status space-time.

  He knew precisely where the flaw would stop its advance. It would end up just over nineteen centimeters from the locus of his clavicle, pushing through the blister field.

  He felt the flaw advancing: to his eyes, it resembled a strange, curved mirror growing larger in front of him. In the clavicle’s abstraction, it registered as an enormous dynamically restrained force, all the tension of the Way’s existence and self-contradictions tied up in a calm, yet raging knot. The singularity was in some respects more real than the Way itself; but few humans could comprehend that kind of reality.

  The flaw pushed aside the blister’s field, which formed a thin, bright-blue ring around it. Inexorable, awesome even to the Engineer, the blunt end of the flaw reflected some nightmarish version of their world, images thankfully indistinct, and came to its greatest extension—as he had predicted—barely a hand-span from the clavicle.

  Korzenowski removed his hands from the clavicle’s bars. He could not see Ry Oyu, although he had been aware of the gate-opener’s presence throughout the linking. Defense forces in the seventh chamber swept their invisible beams of sensor radiation down the re-opened Way, searching for any sign of Jart occupation.

  “The connection is stable,” he said. “The Way is open.”

  67

  The Way

  The Stone orbited the Earth, as it had since the Sundering, with only one difference—it now pointed its north pole away from the Earth. The seventh chamber was now a featureless, abyssal darkness. Traction fields kept all matter away from the north pole. Nothing would be allowed to enter the area of linkage.

  News passed quickly.

  There were few celebrations. The reality was more a matter of sober reflection than festivity. The Hexamon’s obsession had been fulfilled.

  But they had been away from their vast domain for decades—and who knew how much time had passed within the Way?

  The president’s new body was still being made. Korzenowski stood in the middle of the president’s third chamber apartment, located on the peak of the highest building in a chamber-spanning curtain structure on which skycrapers hung like crystals from a spider web. The space was empty and echoing, luminous with the unfinished whiteness of an undecorated environment. The president’s image was a projection from an isolated section of Thistledown’s city memory.

  “Good day, Ser Engineer,” Farren Siliom said. Korzenowski stood with arms folded before the image.

  “The work is done, Ser President.”

  “So I’ve seen…and been told. A superb job, according to your colleagues.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can you explain why the Way is now empty for such a distance?”

  Korzenowski shook his head. “I cannot, Ser President.” It comes down to lies.

  “Could it be because the Jarts are waiting for us, in ambush?”

  “I don’t know what the Jarts are thinking, Ser President.”

  “I think you might have a clue…as much as I do. I’ve had visitors in city memory, three of them.”

  Korzenowski raised his eyebrows, but looked away, close to total exhaustion, wanting to sit. A chair rose out of the floor behind him and he sat. “Excuse me. I haven’t slept or used any Talsit. It’s been very strenuous.”

  “Of course. It isn’t possible to truly dream in city memory, and fantasy or delusion is always clearly marked. What I saw was no delusion.”

  Korzenowski folded his hands, unwilling to make guesses.

  “Mirsky was there,” the president said. “And oddly enough, Garry Lanier, who has died…. Ras Mishiney tells me that he forced Lanier to have an implant. I don’t approve of that, but there’s little I can do to Mishiney…except guarantee he never rises above Terrestrial senator. At any rate, the implant did not retain Lanier’s personality. Somebody else was found in it: somebody missing and accounted as dead for twenty years. Lanier’s daughter. Who brought her back?”

&n
bsp; Korzenowski gave the slightest shake of his head.

  “Ry Oyu was there, also. He spoke with me. Lanier and Mirsky said very little. The gate-opener frightened me. He reminded me of higher duties, duties we once accepted as part of our responsibility in the Way…To utilize the Way in a manner that would ultimately benefit all of our clients. And he told me that you are going to start a crimp in the Way soon, which will eventually destroy it.”

  “Yes,” Korzenowski said.

  “These avatars can apparently go wherever they wish. Lanier and Mirsky are gone now. We won’t see them again. The gate-opener is still with us. He says his work is not finished…Though nearly so, if you’re still convinced.”

  “I am,” Korzenowski said.

  “This goes beyond immediate politics, no? We are both in key positions. I have the power to interfere in the plan. Or I can stand aside and let it proceed, even make it easier for you.”

  “Yes, Ser President.”

  “The Jarts are no longer our enemies?”

  “Perhaps not, Ser President.”

  “They will not attack Thistledown? They’re willing to give up the Way, and all it means to them?”

  “I don’t know. Olmy’s Jart—” Korzenowski stopped, hoping he hadn’t told Farren Siliom something he didn’t know.

  “I’m aware of Olmy’s Jart, though I think the Jart now has Olmy, not the other way around.”

  “It’s probably responsible for the Jarts pulling back from the end of the Way. A signal was sent, informing its kind that humans had definitely communicated with what they call descendant command. Mirsky’s Final Mind.”

  “So Ry Oyu told me.”

  “They probably won’t attack us unless this is disproven, or remains unconfirmed.”

  “I can’t imagine the Jarts giving up anything, certainly not the existence they’ve fought for, the privileges they value so highly. Could humans be so magnanimous?”

  “We’ve both lived a contradictory existence the past year, Ser President, working for the Hexamon rather than ourselves.”

  “That’s our sworn duty.”

  “Yes, Ser. But there are higher duties. As you’ve said.”

  “Do we know what would happen to the Hexamon if we were to persist and keep the Way open?”

  “No.”

  “Is it possible descendant command or the Final Mind would find a way to persuade the Jarts that the Way must be closed, and the Hexamon must be destroyed in order to do that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s certainly possible.”

  “I think it’s likely.” The president’s image appeared to come closer to Korzenowski. “I know what my higher duty is. We must preserve the Hexamon, whatever the mens publica thinks. However polite these avatars have been, however many miracles they’ve worked, I doubt we can stand alone against that kind of force.”

  Korzenowski looked down at his hands. “No, Ser.”

  “I have no other choice, then. I order you to destroy the Way. Can Thistledown be saved?”

  “To completely destroy the Way, and prevent another Way being made, the sixth chamber must be destroyed as well. If we tried to…” He picted images of the sixth chamber being sabotaged, Hexamon forces arrayed against other Hexamon forces, civil war, destruction and division the likes of which the Hexamon had never experienced, even during the Sundering. “There’s no choice, if we wish to destroy the Way and preserve the Hexamon. Thistledown is already prepared for its own death…”

  The president’s image darkened. “Why,” he asked quietly, “would anyone ever wish to be a leader of humans? We could be judged the most treacherous villains in Hexamon history…. But so be it. I’ll make sure the last phase of the evacuation is thorough. You will warn the defense forces…I don’t think they need to know what’s happening and why, but they should not be killed for their valor.”

  “I’ll warn them.”

  “I’m being installed in my new body tomorrow. When will the destruction begin?”

  “Not for another sixty hours, Ser President. To give all citizens and defense forces time to evacuate.”

  “I leave it in your hands. You know, Ser Korzenowski, I’ll be glad not to have to deal with these issues much longer.” The president’s image went black and disappeared, leaving a formal pict of dismissal and the Hexamon’s gratitude for services rendered.

  68

  Between

  They had finished their work on Thistledown. Now they moved through their hidden conduits to points between worlds. Lanier’s sense of time had flown; not inappropriately, since he was supposed to be dead. But he still thought, still remembered, his mind somehow operating in a new matrix established and maintained by Pavel Mirsky.

  Am I dead now? he asked Mirsky.

  Yes. Of course.

  There’s no oblivion.

  Would you rather have oblivion? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

  No…

  Our time here is done. We have choices to make…Choices on how to go home.

  Lanier felt like laughing. He conveyed this to Mirsky.

  Marvelous, no? Such freedom. We can return as Ry Oyu will return, or take another route…much longer, more arduous.

  And he outlined for Lanier where that route would take them, and how long.

  Floating in the soothing, undemanding between, Lanier absorbed the information, already feeling separated from the reality that had been his life. Either route seemed acceptable…But the second way was extraordinary. Only rarely had he even imagined such a thing. Complete freedom, a journey beyond all journeys…and, as Mirsky pointed out, a journey with a definite purpose.

  The Final Mind needs many observers along the way, many progress reports. We can provide one continuous report, from the beginning, to the end.

  We won’t start here? Lanier asked.

  No. We go back to the beginning. We are only observers, after all, and not actors, now that our labor is done. The information we gather can have no effect on the times we’ll gather it from.

  Lanier’s thoughts became crystalline again, and he felt another sharp wave of an emotion mixing sense of duty, love and nostalgia. I haven’t cut my roots to the present yet.

  Mirsky admitted that he had not, either; not completely.

  Shall we say our farewells? Briefly, unobtrusively. To those we love.

  For the last time? Lanier asked.

  For a very long time to come…but not necessarily for the last.

  Now you’re being obscure.

  That’s our privilege, with such freedom! Where will you go to say farewells?

  I have to find Karen.

  And I will find Garabedian. Shall we meet again in, say, a few seconds, and begin?

  Lanier found he could still laugh, and the feeling of lightness in him was held down only by that same weight of duty and nostalgia.

  All right. A few seconds. However long it takes.

  They sped along the conduits reserved for the subtle messages of subatomic particles, space-time’s hidden circuitry.

  Karen walked with three terrestrial senators through the freshly painted streets of the Melbourne camp. “They call these camps. I call them palaces,” the senator from South Australia said. “Our people will still be envious…”

  That debate had been going on all morning, and she was tiring of it rapidly. The day was going to be unbearably long; more meetings, more pointless bickering, more awareness that never, in all of human history, would they be free of their monkey heritage.

  Karen stopped and felt her knees tremble. Something welled up within her, a tide of love and anguish and joy; joy at having spent so many years with her husband, working together, doing as much as two humans could.

  Absolution. We are not perfect; it is enough that we did what we could.

  “Garry,” she said. She could feel his presence, almost inhale him. Her eyes filled with tears. Part of her said, Not now. Don’t lose it now in front of these people. But the sensation continued and she held up
her arms as if to a distant sun.

  The South Australia senator turned and regarded her quizzically.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I feel him. It’s really him, it’s not just me.” She closed her eyes tightly, brought her arms down and held them rigid at her sides. “I feel him.”

  “She lost her husband recently,” the senator from the south island of New Zealand explained to the others. “She’s been under tremendous strain.”

  Karen didn’t hear them. She listened instead to a familiar voice.

  We are always a team.

  “I love you,” she whispered. Don’t go away. Where are you? Is it really you? She raised her arms again, grasping at the air, eyes still closed, and felt for the merest moment the touch of his fingers on her own.

  There are many more surprises, she heard him say, and then the touch was gone, and he seemed to recede across a vast distance.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the puzzled faces around her. “My husband,” she said, trembling uncontrollably. “Garry.”

  They led her to a small greenspace between buildings. “I’m all right,” she said. “Just let me sit.” For a moment, surrounded by young trees and well-manicured lawn, Hexamon architecture a few dozen yards away, she thought she might be on Thistledown again, in the second chamber city, before meeting and working with Garry; that it was all just beginning…

  She shuddered and took a deep breath. Her head was clearing now. The contact had been strong and undeniably external; she was not hallucinating, though she doubted she would ever be able to convince others. “I’ll be fine. Truly. I’m all right now.”

  69

  The Beginning of the Way

  Korzenowski was making a sentimental journey. He wished to touch the surface of the Way before beginning its destruction. It was more than his only child; it was so large a part of himself that ending its existence was a kind of suicide.

  Taking the elevator to the surface of the seventh chamber, he prepared his environment field and waited for the massive door to slide open and show that enchanting perspective, like something from an endless dream.