“Child of Phaneros, do not forget the words of He Who Is, Son of He Who Is. The night of the old creation is fast pasing and the dawn of the new is at hand. Ascend now to the City Imperishable and await the coming morn!”
Though still confused, a small spark of hope kindled deep in Garin’s chest. Rising to his feet, he took a deep breath and set forth on the Sovereign Road. As he crossed the Abyss Garin took one last look down at the great crack that Daath’s rebellion had opened in the structure of the cosmos, then turned his eyes skyward. A few moments later he passed through the shimmering golden crown, the world of Arethos fell away beneath him, and he walked again on the mountain of stars and darkness.
Here the road narrowed, crossing the sheer face of the mountain in a series of sharp switchbacks. Garin pondered this sudden steepness as he climbed, and when at last he realized what it meant a wide smile broke across his face; he was nearing the summit.
Atop the last switchback, the road turned abruptly toward a luminous crystal sphere that shone like a full moon: the final world. Garin did not hesitate when he reached it, but threw himself at the crystalline surface with abandon. For a brief moment all was soft light, and then Garin found himself on the ivory streets of a city of surpassing beauty. As he took in the glory of the place with awestruck wonder, a voice like a harp sounded behind him.
“Dear child, we are so glad you are here. We have been waiting for you.”
Chapter 30: The Last Gambit
“Gedron, what you’re talking about is unthinkable! It’s open rebellion!”
Gedron sat across from Dyana at their kitchen table and watched the color drain from her face. He knew that he would have felt the same if their positions were reversed, but he had still harbored a secret hope that she would come to see his point of view more quickly. Evidently it was not to be.
“Dyana,” he said with a mixture of exhaustion and impatience. “I would not involve you in this if it weren’t absolutely necessary. Believe me, I know what I am risking here.”
“Do you?” she said with a sudden flash of anger. “It’s the first time you have talked to me all week. When you sat down, I thought perhaps you wanted to reconnect, especially in the face of all that has been happening. I knew -I thought I knew- how horrible you must have felt when the reignition failed. But now you tell me that the failure was deliberate and that you want my help to sabotage the next one? No, I don’t think you do know what you are risking!”
Gedron took a deep breath, gathered his thoughts, and considered how to move forward. When he said that he had not wished to involve her, he had been telling the truth.
After leaving the Arx Memoria, Gedron had wracked his brain trying to come up with a way to alter the frequency of the vacuum sculptors’ core filaments. On an engineering level this was relatively easy. The correction needed was relatively small, on the order of a few attohertz, and could easily be performed using the sculptors’ primary calibration equipment. Yet barring a wholesale invasion of the Ouranos Radii’s laboratories, this approach was effectively impossible. Then a new thought had occurred to him. Just as the strings of a musical instrument could be made to resonate to sound waves from an outside source, in principle the frequency of the filaments could be altered by a precisely tuned gravity wave. The more Gedron considered this possibility the more convinced he had become that it held the key to his dilemma. But he also knew that he could not enact it on his own. He would need Dyana’s help.
“I swore an oath Gedron,” she said tersely, snapping him out of his reverie. “You did too.”
“I know,” said Gedron softly. “But think, Dyana, to whom did we swear that oath, those in control of our society or the people that make up that society? I know that we are living in the last days of a dying universe, but that doesn’t mean that I, the Chromatocron, the Entrope, or anyone else should have the right to arbitrarily decide when end should occur.”
Dyana’s lips pursed together as she considered his words. Gedron could see the struggle in her eyes. Like him, Dyana had entered into her current position of authority within the Conclave for the best of reasons. He only had to bring those reasons to the surface.
“Dyana, I can prove to you that the intial attempt at reignition, had I allowed it to continue, would have wiped out half the Conclave,” said Gedron. “And I can also prove to you that if the Heirophants use the vacuum sculptors the chances of supernova are unacceptably high. You are a gravitic scientist. At least let me show you the data.”
After what seemed like an eternity, Dyana’s shoulders sagged in seeming acquiescence.
“All right,” she said. “I can at least do that much. Show me.”
Gedron reached into his robes and brought out his personal infochryst. He sat it on the table and had begun to wave his hand in the gesture of activation when Dyana stopped him.
“No, Gedron, if you want me to look at this, I need to do it myself.”
Gedron nodded, and then pushed the infochryst across the table to her. Dyana gestured above it and a few moments later the device sprang to life, filling the air with simulations of stellar fusion, three dimensional charts of vacuum energy values, and graphics of projected entropy cloud activity. He watched as she studied the images, scrutinizing each with a critical eye. More than once he raised his hand to point out a salient feature only to be silenced. He understood; she needed to come to her own conclusions. After more than an hour she deactivated the infochryst and faced Gedron, her lips creased in a deep frown.
“All right,” she said grimly. “I believe you about the first reignition attempt. Given this data how could I not. But what about the second attempt? I didn’t see any information on that.”
“There’s a reason,” said Gedron gently. “The rest of the data on this device was not supposed to leave the Omagehedron. If you look at it, you will be implicated as in whatever comes next. Dyana, I’ve already counted the cost as far as my own life and career are concerned. Despite what you said earlier, I do know what this means.” He paused for a second, then added: “If I show you the rest you will need to do the same.”
Dyana’s eyes narrowed.
“Gedron, first you tell me that you need my help in planning some sort of insurrection against the other Heirophants, and now that I am starting to think you may have a real point you give me a way out? Honestly, you are not making sense tonight.”
Gedron sighed. “I’m sorry about how this is coming across. I truly want… No… I need you to be with me on this. But I also don’t want you to get hurt if we fail.”
Dyana smiled briefly. “You can’t have it both ways, Gedron. Go ahead, show me the rest.”
Gedron nodded and reactivated the infochryst, this time bringing up a schematic diagram of a vaccum sculptor.
“The Ouranos Radii and Chromatocron developed a device capable of locally modulating the strong force coupling constant. They call them vacuum sculptors, and they use a neutronium wire charged with mesons to modulate the virtual fermionic output of small laridian rings located at the device’s ends. The virtual fermions shift the makeup of the underlying vacuum, which affects the coupling constant. The Heirophants are dispersing millions of these within Vai’s photosphere and plan to use them to alter the binding energy of helium so that fusion will occur at lower temperatures and pressures.”
“That would bypassing the need for a gravitic bombardment,” said Dyana.
“Exactly,” said Gedron. “But look at this.”
Gedron gestured again and a summary of the most recent simulations runs appeared into the air above the infochryst. Dyana’s eyes widened as she reviewed the data. At last she sat back, a look of shock and disbelief on her face.
“But why?” she said. “Why are they taking this path?”
Gedron took a deep breath as he carefully considered his next words. He knew that what he said next would be tantamount to blasphemy against the Conclave’s deepest principles, but as he sat in thought an image of the Entrope rose unbidden
in his mind and he was surprised to realize that he no longer cared.
“Dyana,” he said at last, “have you ever truly considered where the Axioms lead? I once thought that they offered the only way a society as diverse as ours could function. With each individual wrapped up in their own little world, their own little kingdom, conflict could be minimized and some version of harmony maintained. And if that were the extent of it, then perhaps all would still be well. But think about what the Axiom’s say, Dyana! If there is no more to our consciousness than matter in motion then at the deepest level we simply do not exist! If our philosophy is true the each individual in the Conclave is nothing more than a little piece of nothingness desperately holding onto the mistaken belief that they are something real. Oh, we hide it well. We speak of everyone choosing their own path as if that solves the problem. But don’t you see! If each path is right, and all paths go in different directions, then they all cancel out. If everyone creates their own meaning then in the end there is no meaning; existence simply doesn’t signify anything.”
Gedron paused for a moment, watching his wife’s face as the implications of his words sunk in. “The last time the Heirophants gathered in Conclave,” he added in a low voice, “I realized that the Entrope knew this, wanted this, to be true. I saw then that his goal is, and perhaps has always been, to see the Axioms through to their ultimate conclusion. He wants to unmask the lie that we actually exist by bringing this cosmos, or at least our part in it, to an end as swiftly as possible.”
Dyana seemed visibly shaken, and for a moment Gedron felt guilty that he had precipitated this crisis.
No, he told himself, there was no way to avoid this. Sooner or later she had to hear the truth. Sooner or later everyone will. Still, he could not help but feel a pang of guilt.
“You sound like Garin used to before he left,” whispered Dyana at last. Then her eyebrows furrowed and she looked at Gedron intently.
“Gedron, do you know where Garin is? Does it have anything to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Gedron sadly. “Trielle told me yesterday that Gedron was following a dream he had about something he said existed outside our world. She told me he went to our ancient homeworld trying to find a way outside of our universe. It sounded like madness to me, and frankly still does. But the axioms lead to madness as well, and at this point I think I’d rather Garin’s madness be real than our society’s”
“Not madness,” said another voice, “truth.”
Gedron turned to see Trielle standing in the doorway of the kitchen, a look of mingled exhaustion and exhilaration on her face.
“Trielle?” said Dyana, “where have you been?”
“To En-Ka-Re, she replied matter of factly. Father, everything Garin spoke about is true. I saw the hidden valley where the Entrope has imprisoned the remnants of the Dar, though they call themselves the Sur Ekklesia now. I have met the Alapsari and the Anastasi. They are still among us, and, Father, they are not what you think they are.”
Dyana looked at Trielle, her face suddenly tense with worry.
“Trielle, where is Garin?”
“It’s hard to explain, mother,” Trielle confessed. “And the parts I can explain you probably won’t believe.”
“Please try,” pleaded Dyana.
“Garin is… outside…” Trielle said carefully. “I don’t know any other way to say it.”
“Before he left he said he was looking for a road outside of our dying universe, proof that the Axioms were false and that there is more to this life than matter in motion. I didn’t believe him, but then he showed me the map from his dreams, and then we met Kyr.”
Trielle sat down at the table and described their first meeting with Kyr and the fateful conversation that had taken Garin to Sha-Ka-Ri.
“Even then,” she confessed, “I only half believed him. But then I traveled to En-Ka-Re, and they showed me the cosmos, from the outside.”
Gedron’s mind spun with the implication of Trielle words. “What do you mean… outside?” he asked finally.
“I mean that they showed me what is beyond the space and time of our little dying pocket of a cosmos,” she answered. “There’s a mountain made of stars and darkness, and a chain of universes stretching up to… to… I don’t know what to call it. I only know that at the top of all worlds is something, or someone, that wears the form of a man and cares about us deeply. That’s where Garin is, Father. He’s climbing the mountain. And there’s more. Their last High Overshepherd showed me a book written during the war that promises a last prophet would come before the end, one who would travel beyond the world and return with a last message to the Conclave.”
“And they think that Garin may be this prophet they’ve been waiting for?” said Dyana, her voice hollow with disbelief.
“It isn’t just a possibility to them,” said Trielle. “The Sur Ekklesia are convinced that the book refers to Garin and are willing to break the siege of En-Ka-Re to make sure that he has a world to return to. And,” here she paused as if weighing her next word carefully, “I’m convinced too. I know Garin is still alive out there and I know he is coming back, but we need to give him more time to complete his journey.”
Gedron sat in silence as wheels turned within his mind. Trielle’s words had awakened the deepest longings in his soul, and though he could not yet bring himself to accept her story, he could not escape the sense that whether or not the tale was true it might just be beautiful enough to die for. At last he broke the silence.
“Trielle, I want to believe you,” he said at last. “I don’t think I can go further than that right now, but if there is even a chance we can help Garin then we need to take it, especially when the alternative has a fifty percent chance of destroying us all.”
Dyana nodded, her face a mix of conflicting emotions. “Gedron,” she said hoarsely, “you said you needed my help to stop the vacuum sculptors. What do you need me to do?”
Gedron reached for the infochryst and called up the hologram of a vacuum sculptor with a gesture. Reaching into the image, he plucked out the neutronium wire at its heart and enlarged it.
“This filament is the key. As I said before, it is charged with mesons cause the device to produce an unbalanced field of virtual Kaons. It is these particles that alter the local strong force binding coefficient.”
With another gesture Gedron opened up a window containing a complex waveform surrounded by a shifting landscape of equations.
“This is the de Broglie wave signature of the mesonic flux used to charge the filament,” he explained. “In its current configuration, the majority of Kaons are long-type, with a relatively slow decay rate. But Kaons violate CP symmetry, and with a relatively small alteration in the waveform, the chiral balance of the virtual particles changes and the majority of Kaons become short-type. The change in decay rate weakens their effect on binding energy enough to effectively disable the sculptors.”
Gedron called up a second window containing another waveform. He then brought his hands together and the two windows merged, neatly superimposing the waves one atop the other.
“As you can see, there is very little difference between the original waveform and the version we need. I ran a Fourier transform and was able to generate a harmonic correction that can make the alteration, providing we can find a way to introduce it into the neutronium strand. That, unfortunately, is a larger problem.”
Suddenly Dyana’s eyes opened wide with understanding.
“Gravity waves, you want to use gravity waves!”
“Specifically the Large Neutronium Antenna,” said Gedron. “We use the LNA to read the gravitational waves produced by the suns and by the entropy clouds, so we know that it has sufficient range. If we could use it to produce gravity waves rather than detect them, we could use that wave as a carrier for the harmonic correction.”
Dyana quickly reached toward the infochryst and called up an image of the Conclave. Within seconds the air above the table was fi
lled with a whirling hologram of interlocked orbits. Dyana searched the hologram for a moment, and then grasped the image of a gas giant not far from the Guard, enlarging it until Gedron could see a pair of small asteroids in low orbit over the immense planet. Between them stretched a faint bridge, a rod of reddish material over fifty miles long that bound the asteroids together. Dyana gestured a final time and the hologram vanished, replaced by a schematic of the asteroids and the dully glowing column of crystalline neutronium that connected them. Specifications and readouts began to fill the air around the structure.
“These are the operating conditions of the antenna,” Dyana said, indicating one of the readouts. “Gedron, what are the dimensions of the vacuum sculptor core filaments and the frequency specifications of the correction wave?”
Gedron reached into the image and opened up a subwindow containing the needed information. He watched as Dyana superimposed this data on the schematic of the antenna and then called up a series of complex gravimetric equations. It did not take the infochryst long to perform the calculation, and a few moments later a window containing the final results opened in the air above the device. Gedron stared at the numbers, an empty feeling in his stomach.
“Are there any other parameters we can change?” he asked, a hint of desperation in his voice.
“No,” said Dyana grimly. “All the relevant parameters were in the initial run. It’s not going to work.”
“I don’t understand,” said Trielle. “I mean, I can see that the equations predict failure, but what factor is getting in the way?”
“Look here,” said Dyana, indicating one term of the equations. “This variable represents the maximum frequency of the gravitational waves the antenna can generate. And here,” she said, gesturing toward another term, “is the rate of signal decay per light-microsecond of space.
The Sovereign Road Page 29
