Eon

by Greg Bear

  “Pavel Mirsky.”

  “No more talking, please.”

  “We don’t have much time. Either you go back now, or you face up to our decision.”

  “Leave me lone.”

  “May I come in?”

  The sphere’s door dilated and Mirsky pulled himself inside.

  “They’ll be leaving soon,” he said. ”There won’t be any choice after they get started you’ll be here forever.”

  Rimskaya looked terrible pale, his red hair sticking out in all directions, his face scruffy with a four-day’s growth of beard. ’I’m staying,” he said. ”I’ve made up my mind.”

  “That’s what I told your hostess.”

  “You’re speaking for me?”

  “No.”

  “What does it matter to you? You’re back from the dead. You don’t give a damn about your position—your own people tried to kill you. Me, I’ve left ... responsibilities, loyalties.”

  “Why?” Mirsky asked.

  “Shit, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  Rimskaya regarded him doubtfully.

  “You want to see the ultimate,” Mirsky said.

  Rimskaya simply stared, neither confirming nor denying.

  “You, me, Rodzhensky, maybe even the woman—we’re misfits. We aren’t happy with just living one life. We reach out.” He held up a grasping hand. ”I always wanted to see the stars.”

  “You wanted to see stars, so you went into space to fight a war!” Rimskaya said. ”We don’t know what we’ll see. More of this godforesaken corridor.” He wrapped his face in his hands. ”All my life, I’ve been a hard-liner. Everyone thought I was a passionless old ... asshole. Math and sociology and university. My life, held within four walls. When I was sent to the Stone—God, what an experience! And then this opportunity ...”

  “We know it will be interesting, far beyond what we could find on Earth.”

  “The others are going back to save Earth,” Rimskaya said, fists curled tight against his sides.

  “That makes us irresponsible? Perhaps. But no more so than all the people in this half of the city.”

  Rimskaya shrugged. ”Look, I’ve made my decision, and I’m sticking with it. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear,” Mirsky said.

  “Are you wearing the implant they gave you?” Rimskaya asked.

  Mirsky pulled his right ear forward and turned his head to show he was.

  “I still have mine,” Rimskaya said. He opened one fist to reveal the peanut-sized device.

  “You’ll need it,” Mirsky said. He fingered a moment longer, and the American slowly raised the implant to his head and positioned it behind his ear.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  “We leave each other now,” Ry Oyu told his daughter and Yates. He held out his hand, and the Senator grasped it between hers. Olmy, Patricia, Lanier and Korzenowski waited for them beside the disk.

  “What’s he planning?” Patricia asked.

  “He’s going through the gate,” Olmy said. ”The Talsit will accompany him; one of the Frants, as well. All the rest are coming with us.”

  “He can’t survive,” Lanier said. ”They can’t possibly take enough food, oxygen--there isn’t time to prepare—”

  “He’s not going incarnate,” Olmy explained. ”None of them are. They’ll transfer personality to a long-term gate worker. They can research as much as they wish--open other gates, wait for the Axis City if it reaches that distance. They have millions of years of energy.”

  Prescient Oyu shook her head slowly, watching her father’s face.

  “You’ve done well with me,” she said. ”It won’t be easy, not being able to speak with you ... ever.”

  “Come with the Geshel precincts,” Ry Oyu said. ”We might meet again, far down the Way. Who knows what their plans will be, if they succeed? And besides, somebody can always reopen this gate, find us again ...“

  “No one will ever find this gate again,” she countered. “Only you could find it and open it.”

  “She’s right,” Yates said. ”It was your skill.”

  Ry Oyu nodded in Patricia’s direction. ”Korzenoski, or the Earth woman. They could ... but then, Korzenowski’s returning to Earth, and she goes hunting for something even more elusive. Well, at any rate, nothing is final.”

  “This is,” Prescient Oyu said. ”I’m going back to Earth. It’s what we’ve been working for.” She let go of his hand.

  The gate opener picted a symbol to her: Earth, blue and green and brown, clouds vivid and alive, and surrounding it, a loop of DNA; and around that, the simplified equation that Korzenowski had taken from one of the elder Vasquez’s papers.

  The Talsit in its cold bubble and a Frant in a white coat of permanent parting—unpacked just moments before--stood behind Ry Oyu.

  Prescient Oyu reached across and kissed him, then turned to join the rest at the disk.

  The gate opener and his companions moved toward the workshop and the tumulus around the new gate.

  “He fulfills his pledge to the Hexamon,” Prescient Oyu said as the disk closed around them. ”He’ll guide the Axis City if it comes his way.”

  She reached out to Patricia, whose eyes were again moist and touched the Earth woman’s cheek. Removing a tear, Prescient Oyu placed it on her own cheek.

  Olmy instructed the disk to take them out of the terminal, and up to the waiting flawships.

  Both of the flawships, the gate opener’s staff vessel and the defense craft they had arrived in, had removed themselves from the flaw and hung tethered by traction fields, a precaution in case evacuating defense ships came from the north. Olmy chose quickly; they needed speed, and the smaller defense craft was the faster.

  They had to meet the accelerating precincts before they had reached one-third light-speed. There were two options then: the precincts could briefly pull in their generators and flaw grips, and allow the defense flawship to move through the passage; or the defense ship would have to disengage, hug the wall, and weather the pressure wave of particles and atoms pushed before the city.

  But before they encountered the precincts, he had to fulfill his promise to Patricia.

  In the barren sectors where she was likely to find the geometry stacks she needed, she would be sent with a clavicle to the surface of the Way. She would have very little time to accomplish her work; the plasma front would be right behind them.

  Yates took Patricia to an isolated section of the ship and gave her final instructions on the use of the clavicle.

  “Remember,” he told her when he was finished, “you have the instinct, and the desire, but not much skill. You have the knowledge, but not the experience. You must not be rash, you must be deliberate and careful.” He took her by the shoulders and faced her directly. “Do you know your chances of success?”

  She nodded. ”Not very good.”

  “And you’ll still take the risk?”

  She nodded again, without hesitation. Yates let her go and produced the small box from his pocket. ”When I press the clavicle into your hands and transfer its services to you, it will grow to its active size. It will work for you only; if you die, it will crumble to dust. So long as you live, it will serve you—though what use it will be if you succeed, I don’t know. It will open new gates only from within the Way, not from without. It will recognize the existence of prior gates, even should they be closed ... “ Yates removed the clavicle, now little more than twelve centimeters long, and pressed it into her left hand. ”Take both grips,” he instructed. She held both between the thumb and forefinger of each hand. The clavicle picted a steady stream of red symbols at Yates.

  “It doesn’t recognize you now,” he said. ”It’s asking for instructions from its last master. I will reactivate it.” He instructed the clavicle in picted code.

  The device slowly enlarged in Patricia’s hands, until it was the same size as the clavicle used by Ry Oyu.

&
nbsp; “Now I pass its control to you.” More instructions in code, and Patricia felt a sudden warmth between herself and the device.

  Korzenowski watched from a few meters back. Lanier floated behind him, near the flaw passage.

  “I can talk with it now,” Patricia said in wonder. ”I can tell it things directly...”

  “And it can communicate with you. It is active, and you are its master,” Yates said. There was a touch of sadness in his voice.

  Korzenowski came forward. ”I have some thoughts on your search—suggestions for technique,” he said.

  “I’d love to hear them,” Patricia said.

  At a steady acceleration of twenty g’s, the flawship moved south along the Way.

  The plasma front reached the sixty-kilometer sector reserved for the last gate opening, slamming against the barriers, the extreme heat upsetting their subtle geometry. Down came the first barrier, and the little oasis was incinerated; the circuit of wells was fused shut, and the surface of the Way became smooth and undisturbed.

  Final messages from gates along the human-controlled length of the Way told of’evacuations. Millions of humans decided to remain on the worlds beyond their assigned gates, rather than choose between the separated sections of the Axis City. The last remnants of Way commerce were shut down, and the gates were sealed, preparing both for the passage of the Geshel precincts and the arrival of the plasma front.

  Despite the nearness of the plasma front, Olmy began decelerating.

  The flawship had two blunt-arrowhead flyers; Prescient Oyu was outfitting one for Patricia’s journey.

  Patricia went to Lanier and hugged him strongly.

  ”I appreciate all you’ve done for me,” she said.

  Lanier wanted to convince her not to make the attempt, but he didn’t try. ”You’ve come to mean a great deal to me,” he said.

  “Not just a green kid you have to look after?” she asked, smiling.

  “Much more than that. I ...” He looked away from her, face working through a variety of discomforts, and then shook his head.

  “You’re something, Patricia.” He laughed sharply then, through tears. “I’m not sure what, but you’re really something.”

  “Would you like to go with her?” Olmy asked, tracting aft. In each hand, he held a small black sperical monitor.

  “What?” Lanier asked. “She’ll need help. I’m going.”

  Prescient Oyu saw Lanier’s confusion and explained.

  “You’ll create a partial. The monitor will project the partial. It won’t be able to report back to you, of course, since we must move on as soon as we release Patricia.”

  “The partials will die?” Lanier asked.

  “They will be destroyed along with the monitors,” Olmy said. ”But we won’t.”

  Lanier felt an eerie wind through his head. ”Yes,” he said. “I’d like that very much.”

  Ramon, reading Tiempos de Los Angeles, Rita fixing a meal for the homecoming. Coming home. Paul, waiting. What will I tell Paul?

  “You wouldn’t believe ...” Or, “I’ve been unfaithful, Paul, but—” Or just smile at him, and start over again ...

  Olmy and Lanier—rather, their partials—sat beside Patricia in the flyer. She carried the clavicle in her lap. The screen before her showed the barren, smooth surface of the Way. She held the clavicle grips tightly, feeling the quality of the superspace at each point “beneath” the surface, transmitted through the clavicle.

  What she was looking for was far more difficult to find than a particular grain of sand on a beach. She was searching for a universe without the Death, and without herself, also—where the Stone had arrived, but not caused war, and where her alternate had somehow died.

  Not finding that (and she was far from sure she could be that precise—though such a place would exist, and would be distinct from all the others), she would settle for a universe where there would be two of her. She would settle for anything that would take her home.

  She glanced at Lanier’s image. He smiled at her, encouraging and uncertain at once.

  And suddenly, without any reason, without any certainty of her success, she felt wonderful. Patricia Luisa Vasquez existed in a bubble of joy, independent of all that had gone before, not caring what would come after. She had never experienced anything like it. It had neither confidence nor euphoria in its character; it simply was an appreciation of all she had experienced, and would experience, a fulfillment of the compulsion she had had since childhood not to be normal. Not to live a normal existence, but to subject herself to the most extraordinary experiences she could possibly have. The world being what it was, she had long since decided she would have to create those extraordinary conditions in her head. And then, the world turned upon itself. The universes had twisted in some incomprehensible fashion and delivered to her an experience drawn from the visions in her head, made even more wonderfully suange and outre by history, by the actions of tens of billions of people, and who could tell how many nonhumans?

  Her moment was not solipsistic; she did not feel in the least isolated or unique. But she realized how extraordinary her life was.

  She had already fulfilled her wildest and most deeply held dreams. Anything else is gravy, she thought. Even going home.

  The flyer landed smoothly on the surface of the Way. In her hands, the clavicle emitted a pleasant, busy hum, telling her that they would have to be several kilometers south. She informed Olmy’s partial, and he lifted the flyer up for another short hop.

  Overhead, the flawship accelerated south again.

  She closed her eyes, letting the clavicle’s sensations stream through her. She seemed to see a kind of digest of every cluster of alternate universes, tasting them, being part of them; but she could not grasp them. She could not do anything more with the sensations than guide the clavicle. No detailed knowledge about the other realms was conveyed; only the fact of their existence, and whether or not they fell within the range she was seeking.

  The partials would not need a protective field, but she would.

  Olmy prepared a traction bubble and environment for her. Lanier stayed beside her. How much of him is here? she wondered. What is it like when a partial is destroyed?

  Then she turned her full attention to the clavicle. The nose hatch opened and Patricia stepped out onto the surface of the Way, surrounded by the flexible, faintly glowing traction bubble. Lanier and Olmy followed, walking beside her without aid in the high vacuum.

  “You have about half an hour,” Olmy said, his voice conveyed from the monitor to her torque. ”After that, the radiation from the plasma front will be dangerously intense. Will that be time enough?”

  “I think so; I hope so.” Patricia checked her bag and found everything in place: multi-meter, processor, slates and blocks.

  She held the clavicle before her, searching. For ten minutes, she walked back and forth, north and south, the clavicle conveying the enormous stretches of alternate worlds she crossed with each step.

  She discarded impressions from nearly all of them, trying not to jam her senses.

  Within another ten minutes, she had located a line several centimeters long that seemed to harbor the point she was searching for.

  She kneeled, the traction bubble comfortably flexible beneath her.

  The clavicle guided itself within this tiny space, her hands merely completing the causal connection.

  In five more minutes, she had the search down to fractions of a millimeter. The information from each separate universe was much more complex now; she was indeed close to an alternate Earth, and the time period was approximately correct—within a few years.

  “Hurry,” Olmy said. ”The plasma front is near.”

  It was very difficult. Her theories proved to be not quite as precise as she had hoped. Within even the smallest segments of the geometry stack, worlds of substantial degrees of difference interwove.

  She could see now why Korzenowski and his followers had initially regarded t
he regions of geometry stacking as useless.

  The clavicle stopped. She could not tell if she was tuning the region finely enough, but she could spend days searching and not be any closer. She closed her eyes and gave it one final tweak “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Then do it,” Lanier said. She looked back at the partial and smiled her gratitude.

  “Thank you—for everything.”

  Lanier nodded. ”You’re most welcome. It’s been fascinating.

  “Yes ... hasn’t it?”

  She began the gate dilation. To the north, the corridor was filling with a reddish glow. As the seconds passed, the glow progressed higher through the spectrum—orange, an awesome greenish blue—The clavicle’s whistle was painfully intense. She saw a circle of whirling possibilities at her feet, and then she saw the circle--little more than a meter wide—clarify, presenting a distorted picture of blue skies, something bright tan, large shapes and water. She did not have the precise location. She would be on land—she could sense that much—but had no idea where on Earth that land would be.

  Wherever, the traction field would protect her.

  Lanier’s partial bent through her traction field to give her a parting kiss. His lips felt pliant, warm.

  “Go!” Olmy commanded.

  She stepped through the gate. It was like sliding down a hill.

  Everything twisted and spilled around her. She released the clavicle and then grabbed it again with one hand. There was the sound of water, something huge and sharp and white not far away, blinding sun--Lanier and Olmy faced the oncoming radiation.

  It’s not like dying, Lanier thought. There’s another, complete me escaping even now. But he will never experience these things. I’ll never “report” to him.

  They were surrounded by an intense brightness that went beyond light or heat. Olmy grimaced and grinned at once, relishing the sensation. He had sent partials to die before and had never known what their sensations were like. Now, he would experience it directly. And the original Olmy would still never know.

  “The monitors will last a fraction of a second in the plasma front itserf,” he explained Lanier. ”We’ll spend the briefest moment inside a star ... “ Lanier, without pain, without much fear, faced directly north and looked into the heart of the furnace rushing down on them at six thousand kilometers per second.