Eon

by Greg Bear

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m a rogue. A rather violent one, actually, though you wouldn’t know it to look at me. I go where I please, and so long as I’m careful, I maintain. I’ve been non-corporeal for a hundred and fifty years now, supposedly condemned to inactive Memory. Of course, there’s only a copy of me inactivated.

  Sometimes I’m hired for various jobs. Usually I duel with other rogues. I’ve taken down sixty in my time. Lethal chess.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.” She was close to tears now. She couldn’t think who the rogue reminded her of. ”Leave me alone. I just want to think.”

  “Rogues are never very polite. You’re attracting a lot of attention in Axis Nader. I hadn’t any idea where you were, though, until you used the data service just now. A tracer found you—one of my very best tracers. Based on the patterns of a mouse.”

  “Please!” Patricia shouted to the apartment. ”Get him out of here!”

  “It’s no use,” the rogue said. ”Where are you from?” Patricia didn’t answer. She edged toward the bedroom door. ”I’ve been commissioned to find out where you’re from. I’ve been paid in advantages over a very long-term adversary. I will not leave until you tell me.”

  “Who hired you?” she shouted, really frightened now.

  “Let’s see ...I’m speaking twentieth-century English—American, actually. That’s very surprising. Only the most diehard, Ameriphile’s actually learn to speak the language as well as you do. But why would anybody be interested in an Ameriphile?” The image followed her into the bedroom. “They aren’t paying me for guesswork. Tell me.”

  Patricia ran to the main door and ordered it to open. It did not.

  She gulped a breath of air and turned to face the image, suddenly determined not to lose control. ”What ... what do I get in return?” she asked. ”If I tell you?”

  “Maybe we can trade.”

  “Let me sit down, then.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t stop you from doing that. I’m not cruel, you know.”

  “You’re a ghost,” she said decisively.

  “More so than most ghosts you meet,” the image elaborated.

  “What’s your name?”

  “I don’t have one now. Spoor, but no name. Yours?”

  “Patricia.”

  “Not a common name.”

  Suddenly, she retrieved the memory of the rogue’s face. Just as suddenly, she rejected the clue; it was ridiculous. ”I’m really an American,” she said.

  “What percentage? Most are happy to claim three or four percent, though statistically that has to be a pose—”

  “One hundred percent. I was born in the United States of America, in California. Santa Barbara.”

  The image wobbled again. ”Not much time, Patricia Luisa Vasquez. What you say doesn’t make any sense, by itself, but you seem to believe it. How did you grow up so uncluttered and primary?”

  “Where I come from-and when”—she took another deep breath to calm herself—”that’s almost all the choice there is.”

  She cocked her head to one side. ”I know you,’” she said. “You look like Edgar Allan Poe.”

  The rogue betrayed some surprise. ”Fancy you recognizing that. Fancy that indeed. Did you know Poe?”

  “Of course not,” Patricia said, feeling an incongruous tingle of delight beneath her fear. ”I read him. He’s dead.”

  “He’s my chosen mentor. Such a mind!” The rogue surrounded itself with rapid picts of sepulchral figures, live burials, ships in whirlpools and arctic wastes. ”Patricia Luisa Vasquez recognizes Poe. Claims to be a twenty-first-century American. Fascinating.

  “I have to go soon. Ask me what you need to know, and then I’ll ask you one more thing.”

  “What are they going to do with us?”

  “Us? There are others?”

  “Four others. What are they going to do?”

  “I really don’t know. I’ll try to find out. Now, my last question for this visit. Why are you so special to them?”

  “Because of what I just said.” To her surprise, all her fear was gone. The rogue or ghost or whatever it was seemed to be willing to cooperate, and she saw no reason to be foolishly loyal to their kidnappers.

  “We can help each other, I think. Did you know your data service has a block on it? They’re keeping you here and they’re selectively cutting off your access. If you tell them I’ve been here, I may not be able to come back, and I won’t be able to answer your question. Think about it. Until next time,” the man said, and vanished. The apartment suddenly found its Voice.

  “Ser Vasquez, are you well? There has been interference.”

  ”Don’t I know it,” Patricia said.

  “Could you describe the difficulty?”

  She bit on her knuckle for a moment, then shook her head.

  “No,” she said. ”It wasn’t much of a problem.” The image had frightened her—but it had told her a number of interesting things, too. She doubted the incident was a test or experiment. The rogue might prove a useful source of information ...

  “Must have been a short circuit or something, in your works, you know.”

  The room did not respond for some seconds. ”Repairs will be made, if necessary. Do you need anything?”

  “No, no thank you,” Patricia said. She looked at the pictor, frowning, and again bit at her knuckle.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The Presiding Minister of the Infinite Hexamon Nexus, Ilyin Taur Engle, kept his quarters in one of Central City’s six broad ventilation shafts, buried deep in the spreading Wald.

  Olmy had never wished to settle into a primary home, but he envied the P.M. his quarters nonetheless. There was such an air of isolation and peace in the Wald, and such a fantasy of elegance in the quarters themselves.

  The six shafts ran straight from the outermost facets of Central City to the governing spheres at the precinct’s core.

  Within each shaft, as many as ten thousand corporeals lived among the winding paths through the Wald. Their homes varied from thick clusters of communal glass floats anchored to the broad aerial roots, to small free-moving cells adequate for one or at most two homorphs, or no more than four of the average neomorphs.

  The Wald was both decoration and a nod to Naderite philsophies; about a third of Central City’s atmosphere needs were taken care of in the shafts, with Geshel-designed scrubbers doing the rest. Thousands of varieties of trees and other plants—some food-bearing—had been genetically altered and adapted to weightlessness. Fully a third of the Axis City’s biomass was botanical and concentrated in the Wald.

  One of Olmy’s great pleasures was to tarzan through the Wald, flying from root to limb, drifting down the paths without benefit of traction fields. There were designated sport paths and quickways with many exercising homorphs and a few whizzing neomorphs and virtually no vehicles; he had timed himself on a thousand different occasions on the more difficult of these and had honed his time down to as little as fifteen minutes from outer facet to shaft bottom.

  Now, however, he felt no need to race. He tarzaned at a leisurely pace, arms folded behind his back, legs cocked like a skater’s, kicking from broad leaf to smooth-worn root surface, following well-traveled courses down the path. More valuable than speed was the time to think.

  Plastic tubes containing thick luminescent soups of bacteria, known as light-snakes or glow-worms, wound through the Wald, each a meter thick and sometimes half a kilometer long.

  In glades, they would macrame across one side in dazzling bright patterns, proximity making some glow peach and red, others dull down to a rich dark gold. Homorphs often gathered in the glades to bathe in the light from the patterns; Olmy barely glanced into the few glades he passed, intent on his steady progress down the shaft.

  It took him twenty minutes to reach the Presiding Minister’s quarters.

  He left the main path by way of a narrow fork, and drifted through the flowering hoops formed by
a tormented root. The quarters floated in the middle of the P.M.’s private glen.

  The residence was designed like an old eighteenth-century terrestrial English manor house, with many modifications to allow for the lack of up and down. There were three roofs, and ways to enter the house from six different angles. Bay windows opened on three axes.

  Geometric cypress growths screened one window against a glow-worm pattern at the far end of the glen.

  Monitors flew up to him as soon as he emerged from the flowering hoop tunnels and identified him positively, retreating to their other duties: hedge trimming, insect watch and keeping track of the P.M.’s pets.

  The house voice welcomed him and requested he enter by the bright door, facing the glow-worm pattern. The P.M. would be with him directly.

  Olmy braced himself into a dormier and watched with a mix of condescension and boredom a brief picting of the household’s recent activities. When the pictor cleared, he saw an unfamiliar neomorph preceding the P.M. into the waiting room. The neomorph—vaguely fish-shaped, limbless—regarded Olmy with a crystalline fox face and pitted casual greetings, but no ID. Olmy returned the greetings with a similar deletion, recognizing one of Toilet’s aids. The neo-morph exited through the bright door, surrounded by its own midge-cloud of compact monitors.

  “Getting more and more daring, aren’t they?” the P.M. asked, extending his hand. Olmy shook it. ”Now I ask you—would you trust somebody you can’t shake hands with?”

  “I’ve not trusted many I could shake hands with,” Olmy said.

  The P.M. regarded him with a mixed expression of humor and not-quite-hidden irritation. ”You’ve come to brief me on our newest ancestral guests.” He ushered Olmy into his broad duodecahedral internal office. The P.M.’s round desk gimbaled on the single rod at the center; seven of the walls were covered by rootwood cases containing antigue books and message blocks. Other walls held fine illusart and false windows opening onto time-delayed scenes of other rooms in the house, edited to take out whatever occupants were in them.

  “The President is still upset,” Ingle said, tucking his elbows in to sit behind the desk. “I’m afraid most of the President’s council are finding it difficult to understand why you brought the five back with you.”

  “I only brought one,” Olmy corrected. ”The others followed on their own, unexpectedly.”

  “Yes, well, however they got here, they’re trouble. Secessionists are seeking advantages already, and concessions. They’re not far from getting all their groups together—and this certainly could unite them. It could also conve the Korzenowski faction from a radical party to a popular front. The President’s position could be endangered. Even so, he feels he doesn’t have the time to oversee these difficulties directly, what with the Jart conferences still filling his days, so he’s assigned Ser Oligand Toiler—whom you’ve met, I believe—and myself.”

  “Bearers of bad news are never appreciated,” Olmy said.

  “Yes? Well, whether the news itself is actually good or bad depends on how we react, does it not? Frankly, I don’t share all the President’s misgivings—some, but not all. I feel we can turn the situation—and the news—to our advantage. Perhaps we can even achieve the consensus we need to face the Jarts effectively. Now, your message said you had more news.”

  “Someone has hired at least one rogue in City Memory to penetrate the guest quarters. Someone is desperate to find out what all the fuss is.”

  “Yes, that much I could have guessed,” the P.M. said. “Well, then, perhaps it’s time we released all we know. It’s probably going to he common knowledge in a week or less, especially if rogues are in on it. What’s your opinion, Ser Olmy?”

  “I’ve voiced it before, Set; I should testify before the Nexus.”

  The P.M. considered that for a moment. ”I still have my doubts as to the wisdom of that. But you may be right. If the truth must be unveiled, let us do the unveiling, no? But delicately. Millions of neomorphs are already scared silly by the secession talk. Drop a bombshell into the middle of it—saying the Thistledown has returned to Earth? Not an easy decision. At any rate, we can’t call a full Nexus because of the Jart conferences. A partial will have to do.” He left the desk, betraying his nerves. “I’ll need a heavy session of Talsit this evening.” He crossed his arms and floated in the middle of the office, his voluminous black robes assuming billows of repose.

  “You will testify in person, then, as an agent of the Hexamon?”

  “The Frant and I,” Olmy confirmed.

  “The Frant won’t testify; it’s against their creed to take an oath.”

  “It will confirm my testimony. That’s allowed.”

  “And what then, Ser Olmy? How can we restrain our curious ones—whoever hired the rogue—or the Korzenowski faction, Pneuma be kind, after that?”

  “That may not be our greatest problem. There are still two thousand humans in the Thistledown; sooner or later, we have to bring them under our control. Our first guest, Vasquez, was already very close to learning how to manipulate the sixth chamber machinery. I assume others will eventually duplicate her work, despite the interdictions in the Thistledown libraries.”

  “Star, Fate and Pneuma never see fit to limit our troubles, do they?” the P.M. said with a sigh that upset the billows of his robe. “Logos he praised.”

  “Logos,” Olmy echoed doubtfully.

  “We share a certain Geshel incredulity, don’t we?” the P.M. said, watching Olmy’s reaction carefully. ”Not wise to reveal it to everyone, however, not from this lofty position, anyway. Is there immediate danger of our ... ancestors! Such a word—is there much chance of their disturbing the sixth chamber soon?”

  “Not with Vasquez in the Axis City. Not in a matter of months, or even a year.”

  “Very well. First things first. I’d say it would be in our best interests, if we reveal at all—and that seems unavoidable now—to make a public show of our guests. They are extraordinary—and they might give us an advantage over the President’s opposition. I’ll have my secretaries plan an agitprop. Their advocate—your partner, Suli Ram Kikum—has she been useful?”

  “Very,” Olmy said. ”But her work has hardly begun.”

  “Excellent,” the P.M. said. ”But we mustn’t be too confident. If the Jarts start their offensive early or, heaven forbid, decide to open a gate into a star’s heart—then our visitors will mean next to nothing.”

  Ingle shook his head, picting a chain of symbols—a gnat being consumed in a solar prominence.

  Chapter Fifty

  Corporal Rodzhensky lay with his back against the black library wall. Before him were scattered ration packets and tins, some Russian, most American. He snored lightly and regularly.

  Beside him, Major Garabexlian had squatted to eat an American dinner of ham and potatos all gratin, imported from the fourth chamber as part of the as-yet-unratified treaty agreements.

  As he ate, he kept a wary eye on the American soldiers lounging several dozen meters across the quadrangle. The forces were exactly equal; ten Russians, ten Americans, all armed with rifles but without lasers.

  There would be no silent assassinations.

  Tensions had calmed slowly after the Americans had arrived at the behest of Corporal Rodzhensky and the Chinese man and woman. The library had been sealed ever since, with Lieutenant General Mirsky, Colonel Vielgorsky, Majors Belozersky and Yazykov and Lieutenant Colonel Pogodin held incommunicado. There had been some suspicion at first that American trickery was involved; Garabedian had decided otherwise after several hours of talks with Pritikin, Sinoviev and the American civilian leader, Hoffman.

  No one knew what had happened within the library, although Hoffman had expressed an all-too-plausible theory that made no one happy.

  Garabedian still mulled the theory over, shifting his eyes between the implacable black wall and the American soldiers.

  The Zampolits, Hoffman suggested, had tried to kill General Mirsky.

&nb
sp; Whether or not they succeeded, the library building had sealed itself off to prevent further violence and perhaps preserve evidence.

  All they could do was wait.

  It had been a week. During that time, Garabedian and Pletnev had managed to keep the Russian troops from doing anything unwise—factionalizing, spreading agitation or unfounded speculation.

  Work had proceeded on construction of their quarters in the fourth chamber. A few Russians—fifty-two, at last count—had simply left the camps and vanished into the fourth chamber woods. Five had been found so far, well fed—the woods were full of various edible plants.

  But three of those five had been fetal-curled and withdrawn in delayed shock.

  American psychologists had offered to help; there had been similar cases among the Americans, most notably Joseph Rimskaya, who had been stricken just three days before. He had wandered into the main Russian camp in the fourth chamber, weeping uncontrollably, his clothes and back in shreds from self-flagellation. He had been returned to the Americans. But Garabedian did not think it wise to allow Russian soldiers access to American psychologists.

  What he felt, above all, was sadness, a sense of loss which almost overwhelmed his sense of duty. He—like Mirsky and most of the young officers—had been part of the new Russian military experiment, begun to fix the problems highlighted by the manifold failures of the Little Death. They and their colleagues had worked with each other as a team, not as brutal antagonists in a throwback nineteenth-century system.

  They had achieved great things, increasing efficiency and decreasing alcoholism, desertion, violence and suicide.

  They had been the new breed, and their successes had made them cultural heroes. The conquest of the Potato would have brought them untold glory; instead, through some error he could not yet comprehend, they had failed miserably, and their heritage was now ashes.

  Garabedian understood all too well the pressures which drove his comrades to swim to the fourth chamber islands and lie down on the forest floor, pulling humus and mold over their soaking fatigues.