by Greg Bear
Wachsler shook his head, speechless. Hergesheimer collapsed in his seat, mumbling unheard.
Charles turned and left the auditorium. Leander and I followed. Most of the staffers in the auditorium stayed in their seats or moved closer to the separating glass wall, like observers at an old-ashioned execution.
Charles sat on the edge of a couch beside the main tweaker. "I'll need some help with these," he said, lifting one hand to point to the larger array of optic cables. Stephen and I helped him attach the cables, and Charles lay back on the couch. "I'll be the only one in the loop to the QL," he said. "But others can observe. It would be easier if I can talk with people while it's happening. I'll feel more real. And if those people are seeing some of what's happening, with me ..."
"I'll observe," I said.
Charles pointed to a smaller couch on the other side of the thinker platform. "I hope you'll be comfortable," he said.
I sat on the couch. "Do I need . . . ?" I pointed to the cables attached to the base of his neck.
"No. No feedback required. Standard image projection, or immersion. Immersion should really be something."
I swallowed. "Immersion, then."
"I appreciate this, Casseia," Charles said. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, Adam's apple bobbing on his throat, jaw clenching, relaxing.
"Least I can do," I said.
"It's our only choice," Charles said. "We have to leave. I know that. You've made a courageous decision."
I followed Leander with my eyes as he prepared for my immersion. A few narrow bands around my head, projectors from a modified slate, a few slim optical connections between slate and interpreter, and I experienced a comfortable floating sensation, neural chitchat in the far background.
I glanced around, nervous at even these few constraints. The room smelled cold and metallic and seemed absurdly large for the apparatus; an echoing cavern with lights focused on the tweaker, force disorder pumps, refrigerators . . . One director, one backup — Tamara Kwang, with her own nimbus of cables and connectors — and one observer.
Leander finished checking all connections and stood to one side, arms folded.
"Mars is a big body," Charles said. "We have to reference more orthonor-mal bases for each descriptor, exponentially more for descriptors that super-posit. That means storing some results in the unused descriptors within the tweaker. That's easier in a larger tweaker."
"The danger is no greater than before — less, probably," Leander said. "But the director's job is more difficult. He has to be more congruent with the QL to keep those extra descriptors in tune with the overall goal."
"And?"
"The interpreter still gets in the way. Charles will have to be more direct. Straight through to the QL."
Again the howl of converted matter shook the floor. Dandy left the auditorium and stood beside Stephen. "We're going to lose the station through blast effects if we don't go now," he said.
Dandy avoided looking at Charles as if he were indecent or sacred and forbidden.
"We'll do it in three," Charles said. "Just to be extra cautious. First, we'll advance along Mars's orbital path fifty million kilometers. If there's any doubt about the next step, we'll leave it there."
"They'll find us again, finish the job," Tamara Kwang said softly, self-consciously touching her cables. Drops of sweat beaded her face even in the chill.
"There won't be any doubt," Charles said. "The next step will put us about three trillion kilometers from the New System. We'll get our bearings and make the next jump."
"We can't stay in deep space for more than a few minutes," Hergesheimer said. I had not seen him come into the lab, but he stood a few meters from the tweaker, hands in his pockets, hair thoroughly tousled. "If we stay in deep space for more than a few minutes, Mars will experience extreme weather changes."
Faoud Abdi entered, followed by two assistants. "I have checked the damage," Abdi said, "and we have only ten percent of our Mars surface trackers linked through transponders. The rest are gone or we can't reach them. I believe we can still get a feel for what is happening to the planet, but of course . . . there is no way to tell others what to expect. There will also be more severe areological effects if we do not enter a comparable solar tide situation quickly. And the same side must be turned toward the new sun. This is very important."
"Understood," Charles said.
"The tidal bulge," Abdi continued.
"It's in the calculations," Stephen told him.
"Where's my station, my instrument hookup?" Hergesheimer asked. I heard but could not see Leander directing him toward the far side of the lab, where all of the exterior instruments of Preamble would direct their flow of data.
"Let's do it," Charles said.
I dropped my head back and stared into the projectors. Suddenly my neck hair rose and I nearly screamed. I felt some one standing beside me, opposite Leander and Dandy; I knew who he was, but did not want to accept that I was still so close to the edge.
I could not see him, but his presence was as real as anything else in the room, more real perhaps, more believable. His name was Todd, and he was about five years old, with fine brown hair and a ready smile, cheek smooth and downy and brown, fingers nimble, face flushed, as if he had just come back from exercise or play. He wanted to tell me something. I could not hear him.
He would have been my son. Ilya would have been his father.
I must have made a sound. Charles asked if something was bothering me.
"I'm fine," I said. "Let's go." I wanted to reach out and hold my son's hand, but he was no longer there.
I would never feel his presence again.
"Go," Stephen echoed.
"Going," Charles said.
Staring into the projectors, my head wrapped in neutral sound from the immersion bands, I saw Mars mapped above me as a highly detailed sphere, elevations exaggerated, all of our remaining trackers marked by pinpricks of red. By turning my head, I could see Phobos and Deimos. The map had not been recently updated, for Many Hills and other stations I knew to be gone were plainly marked as well.
"We'll lose all our satellites," Dandy murmured. He seemed far away, as did the rumbling howl.
Charles's voice spoke in the middle of my head, startling me. "First frame shift in two minutes," he said. "Hear me, Casseia?"
"Yes," I said. "I see Mars."
"Would you like to see what the QL is doing?" he asked. "When I go in, I'll be part of its processing. You'll be outside, watching."
"Okay," I said.
I tried to relax my rock-tense muscles. Best to die relaxed, I thought; the universe seemed unpredictable enough that such a distinction might be important.
The image of Mars changed radically as I was drawn into the QL's perspective. What I saw was not a planet, but a multi-colored field of overlapping possibilities, the planet as a superposited array. The QL's assessment changed every few seconds, colors shifting, assignments of the Pierce region flashing at blinding speed: all of Mars scoped and measured using a logic no human could follow, a logic lying outside or beneath the rules of the universe.
I saw more clearly now the value of the QL's contribution. That it was in fact self-aware, despite these distortions, gave me a chill. What sort of self-awareness could function when consciousness had no shape, no specified purpose?
Who could have designed such a mind? Humans had — famous and less famous; and QL thinkers had played a small role in human affairs for a century and a half — but no human, not even the designers, could encompass the QL mentality. It was not superior — in some respects, it operated much more simply than any human or thinker mind — but what it did, it did superbly — and unpredictably . . .
If I was a spectator, watching this odd and beautiful horse perform its dressage, Charles was the rider.
"We've measured and drawn the first orthonormal base," Charles said. "Now we measure the translation of conserved descriptors to the larger system."
With the help of my enhancement, I understood part of what I saw: massive number-crunching through the interpreter's computer portion, cheating on nature by pulling the "energy" required to shift Mars from the total energy of the larger system, the Galaxy, In fact, the energy would never be expended, not in any real sense; the universe would simply have its demanding bookkeeping balanced, under the table, while it wasn't looking.
"Twenty seconds until the first frame shift," Charles told me. Our link seemed more and more intimate. He spoke solely for my benefit. "QL is now reassigning all descriptors to the fast destination." We would move everything in the "space" to be occupied by Mars, at the same "time" we shifted the planet itself, in effect trading places. This was the easiest part of the process to understand, though not to accomplish.
"The tweaker is beginning to radiate," Stephen said outside. "Fluctuation in the Pierce region."
I saw the two frames — our present frame and the frame we would translate ourselves to. They overlapped, and then, for an instant, I could not see Mars at all. What I saw instead was horrifying in its simplicity.
Mars had been reduced to an ineffable potential. It could be anything, and we were with it — we had been drawn outside of the rules, away from the game. This was the blanking, when systems that relied on moment-to-moment correlations — minds, computers, thinkers, electronic systems — had to jumpstart themselves, to assume that there had at one time been a reality, and that all of the rules had been what they seemed to be now.
In the potential, I saw — though fortunately, I did not feel — the attraction of what seemed to be choice. We could choose other sets of rules. The QL danced through these with great haste. I wanted to linger, to sample; what if this were changed, or that, or that — such fascinating prospects!
"Frame shift," Charles said. The potential vanished and I saw again a simple representation of Mars. Hergesheimer took quick measurements of our position.
The rumbling howl died to a faint shiver, barely heard or felt through the couch's padding. We were no longer where we had been. Earth had lost its target.
"Charles, how are you?" I asked.
"Well enough," he said. "The QL got a little frightened back there. Changing the rules seems to be as attractive as sex. It feels at home in that kind of place."
"Don't let it do any dating," I suggested. The immensity of what might have happened was lost in a sudden feeling of lightness.
"I think we did it right," Charles said. I blinked away from the projectors and squinted at him on his couch. His eyes were closed and his breath came in shallow jerks.
Something brushed my arm. I swiveled my head the opposite direction and felt such a sudden sense of relief, tears started to flow. I lifted up my arm and reached out.
Ti Sandra stood beside my couch. She looked very healthy, back to her full weight, face wide and radiant and proud. She wore her most flamboyant gown, hand-stitched tiny glass beads sparkling. She stroked my arm, her touch as light as a breeze. "You made it," I said. "God, it's good to see you."
"We've advanced along Mars's orbit fifty million two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers," Hergesheimer sang out
Ti Sandra shook her head, still beaming at me, eyes crinkled down to slits with her pride and her love. I wondered at the lightness of her touch.
"Now for the first big leap," Stephen said. "Charles?"
"Assessing," Charles said.
I had glanced away at the sound of Stephen's voice. When I glanced back, Ti Sandra was not there, of course, but her touch on my arm remained.
I settled back into the couch, mouth dry as flopsand, and let the projectors find my eyes again, filling my field of view.
"There's no greater time lag — no lag at all," Charles said. "But we'll seem to be in the blanking longer, you and I and the QL and interpeter. We have a lot more translation to do — to the larger system. That will seem to put us outside status quo longer."
Status quo — things as they are. All the familiarities to which our minds adapt from infancy. Home ground, home turf, home rule.
"The longest ever for the QL," I said.
"Right," Charles affirmed.
"Temptations."
Charles chuckled.
"Dangerous for you, too?"
"You bet," he said.
"Like sex."
"Much worse, dear Casseia," he said. "I'm in here with the QL, keeping it from getting distracted, but I experience most of what it experiences."
"You told me once you wanted to understand everything," I said.
"I remember."
"In the blankness ... I wanted to play around, too."
"If we played for an eternity," Charles said, "we might learn how to put together a universe. You and I."
"But you say there's no time passing."
"Eternity means no time. Infinity without time. A ring of bright and endless theorizing. The ultimate play."
Leander broke in. "Are you still working, Charles?"
"Still at it," Charles said. "You want reports?"
"Don't keep us guessing, Charles," Leander said.
"QL has finished assessing the planet and the site, and it's preparing to fix the books," Charles said. "Don't mind us, Stephen."
"Don't mess with her mind too much, Charles," Stephen said. "We need her after you're done."
"You'll see something different, this time," Charles told me, his voice barely above a whisper. Intimacy beyond that of man and wife: the intimacy of two young gods. "I think it will be part of the QL's longer acquaintance with the larger system. It will be measuring the highest level of superposited descriptors, up to, and maybe beyond those that are actually in use ..."
"Unused descriptors," I said.
"Or no longer in use," Charles said. "Descriptors for things that once were, or might be. Or for nothing at all. Vestigial or excessive."
"How many minutes until frame shift?" Leander asked.
"Four minutes," Charles said.
"Earth might get a fix on our new position and start again," Leander said.
"To hell with them," Charles said. I could tell he was smiling, man on a powerful horse, riding confidently. But that horse was going to grow unbearably magnificent in the next few minutes.
"What would you use them for, Charles?" I asked.
"The untagged descriptors?"
"Yes."
"I think they're waiting for when we're mature. We could make new forms of matter. We could translate all human information into the upper memory of mass and energy. We could trick space into believing it was matter or energy, or into believing it was something we can't even conceive now."
"You talked about that once, a long time ago," I said.
"A dialog with the radixes of creation."
"Radishes?" Leander interrupted.
"Stephen," Charles said, "leave us alone. We're fine. Casseia is doing her job."
"She sounds more theoretical than political," Leander said dourly.
"One minute," Charles said.
I had a card to play, to keep Charles rooted in this particular creation. Now seemed the best time.
"I've thought of you often," I said.
"What?" Charles seemed puzzled by the shift.
"I've thought of you often since we were together."
"I've caused enough trouble, no?"
"I've thought about what you said, when we were trading ambitions. I think I know why I turned you down, Charles."
He said nothing.
"I did love you, but you were going places I could never go."
"Right," he said softly.
"It seems terrible to say it, but I wanted to be with someone less stimulating."
"Right."
Leander whispered in my ear, "Casseia, what in hell are you doing?"
I pushed him away. "There was a moment when I felt so close to you, years after, I felt as if we had actually gotten married and lived a lifetime together. You came to my rescue, Charles."
"When was th
at?"
"I had my back against a wall, talking with Sean Dickinson."
"You liked Sean."
"He was acting on Earth's behalf after the Freeze. He was forcing us — me — to give up everything. I never felt so trapped in my life. Then you sent your message."
"Ti Sandra — " Charles said.
I interrupted. "I went to the surface and looked west and saw Phobos through the clouds." My voice hitched again with the emotion of that moment. "I knew what you were going to do. And you did it. You took all my burdens away. My God, what you did for me then, Charles. I was so very proud."
"I'm glad," Charles said.
The image of Mars grew dark in my field of view. Through the darkness I saw the potential coming, the blankness a huge animal moving through void to reach us. The impression of its living beauty petrified me, like a rabbit facing a tiger.
"Shifting frame now," Charles said. I felt his calmness, his focus, his strength. Charles was really so simple, still a child. I had spoken a truth I had not been able to acknowledge until now, and he believed me.
"I love you," I said.
"I always have, and I always will love you, Casseia," Charles said. He took a deep breath. "Let's play."
Abruptly, the QL expanded the scale of our simulation. We seemed to hang over the Solar System, the inner planets bright points marked by armil-laries of coordinates, references for descriptor bases, expansions of arrays for major effects on Mars.
Removing Mars would have virtually no effect on the sun or planets.
The tiger struck.
In the blankness, I wondered what the universe would be like if Charles spoke to me reassuringly
There would have been no agreement between charges of particles having no extension, point-like particles such as the electron, and aggregates such as the neutron; and furthermore, superposition would not be possible, and the universe would crumble
But Charles held firm, and guided the QL
The blankness drew me into something like a dream, where all actuality was but a subset of
My life would have been
"Casseia."
No going to Earth, staying home, no
"Casseia."
My enhancement seemed to throw colored layers of notation at me, layer upon layer piling up in beautiful depths, staring through a sea of described realities, and within that sea, the Mars that I had known reduced to a vector space, a single state array forming the basis for everything thereafter, and that moment had been (searching out the root, the zero for its passage over an infinite plane of my existence).
