The Stillness Among the Stars

by James P. Hogan

  The key word was “knowledge.” The entire instrumentation systems associated processing complexes of mec-minds, like the nervous systems and brains of bio-life, specialized in acquiring it. And what Taya and those like her had demonstrated, Physicist believed—and which the culture of the Ancients had taken to a greater level—was an ability to obtain knowledge from parts of the totality—the superposition of all possibilities—that hitherto had not been accessible. In short, information could be acquired in ways that were not covered by the laws that Scientist had once maintained described the workings of the universe. Nevertheless, this was not something supernatural in the way Mystic insisted. The “universe” was just a lot bigger now than Scientist had thought, and “natural” meant more than it used to.

  Why, then, hadn't mec-minds been able to do the same thing too? This was a question they had been asking ever since it became incontrovertible that Taya sometimes knew things in ways Scientist couldn't explain. Now that Physicist had come up with a possible underlying mechanism that was at least comprehensible if not yet comprehended, demands for an answer had become all the more pressing. Thinker thought he might have found one, although it didn't seem to spell very good news for the mec-minds.

  It was only when experiments were performed at the finest levels of detectability and sensitivity, where the separate wave and particle properties of quanta become manifest, that the first hints became apparent of all possible worlds existing in an immense totality, and every part of it being equally real. Seeming paradoxes were confirmed that could only be resolved by interpreting them in terms of parts of the familiar reality interacting with those of others never before revealed. What it meant was that the constituent realities—the number of them was too stupefyingly large to bear comparison with anything visualizable—normally unaware of each other, interfered at the quantum level; in other words, at this level there was communication between them. And this, Thinker thought, was what biological brains had found a way of tapping into.

  The sensitive, incredibly delicate molecules contained in their nervous systems were what made it possible, he surmised. Receptors in the eyes of some animals responded to single photons. (Human retinas were as sensitive too, but smoothing and correcting mechanisms in the visual system made stronger stimuli necessary in order to register.) Suppose, then, Thinker had suggested, something of comparable sensitivity appearing in the brain, which responded to signals originating from elsewhere in the totality and arriving via the same channels of information leakage that permitted interference. Couldn't that, with refinement and connection to neural amplifying machinery, lead to faculties beyond anything else in the animal kingdom? Yet it would surely be no more awesome than those that already turned the energies of impacting photons into the world of sounds, sensations, and images created in the mind.

  Skeptic, of course, said he'd believe it when somebody showed him a mechanism that could turn quantum effects into coherent messages, and Scientist had been spending lots of time with Physicist to see what they could come up with. But the sobering implication was that if Thinker was right, then machine minds might never be able to duplicate the ability. They weren't based on neurons containing the same delicate molecules, but on rugged circuits formed out of silicon and optical crystal.

  This was where Mystic disagreed with all of them, saying that Physicist was trying to take over his revelation of Supermind and call it “Super Universe” instead. But Physicist was still trying, as he and Scientist always did, to impose restrictions that reflected the limits that existed in their own thinking, not anything to do with the reality they were talking about. Supermind could do anything He wanted to, and when He decided he wanted machines to develop Insight too, they would. What made bio-minds different wasn't anything to do with molecules, but that they believed. Mec-minds should learn to believe in things too, instead of spending their time thinking up reasons why they couldn't happen.

  There was also another side to Physicist's theory, that Biologist had pointed out. That same delicacy of the molecules which formed the basis of biological life was what caused it, in the end, to break down. Kort reflected on the irony as he looked at Taya, now peaceful and with her eyes closed, sunk back into the cushions. The price of seeing into other worlds and other times, it seemed, was that it was granted just for a short while. Insight and mortality came together.

  It was time they were getting her back inside, he decided. Perhaps he would fetch a wrap first for her shoulders before disturbing her. He leaned across for the tray, and when he moved it the clink of the glass against the jug made Taya open her eyes. “Oh. You looked as if you were sleeping,” Kort said. “I was going to get you a wrap."

  “Does that mean you're going to start fussing at me to go back inside?"

  “It would probably be better. We wouldn't want you to get chilled."

  “Oh, just a few more minutes, Kort. It's so peaceful, and I can hear the birds. Do you remember how astonished we were by the birds?"

  Kort sat back and nodded a faint grin. “Engineer had put all that work into figuring out how to build a flying machine for us to land in."

  “And there they all were, just ... doing it.” Taya stared for a while toward the orchard at the far end of the garden, where the birds were busiest. “What's Engineer doing these days?” she asked finally in a faraway voice.

  “Oh ... all kinds of things. A lot of construction. Materials and manufacturing—mainly centered around the fusion plants."

  “And the space projects?"

  Kort shrugged. “Nothing particularly new. You know about the lunar workings and the orbiting bases. The planetary missions are finding some interesting things.” There were Azureans off-planet now, engaged in various tasks, although the longer-range operations still involved machines only at this stage. Kort didn't feel comfortable about elaborating on them—things that Taya would never see. But she seemed to want to talk about it.

  “I can remember how the stars looked out there,” she said. “I gave up trying to count them. I used to watch them for hours, trying to guess what they were and waiting for Vaxis to get bigger. With Rassie. What ever happened to Rassie?"

  “I think you gave her to Nyelise."

  “Oh, that's right.... And there was just you and me and Merkon, and neither of us knew where we'd come from or how we'd gotten there."

  “True.” Kort couldn't see much else to say.

  “Is it all that much different now?” Taya asked, looking back at him. “So there are more of us today, and we call some of them Azureans, and we're on Azure instead of Merkon. But are the questions any different?"

  “Now you're sounding like Mystic and Scientist and Skeptic, Asker-Of-Endless-Questions,” Kort said.

  “Are they still arguing about that?"

  “What else do they do?"

  “And have they got any answers?...” Taya waved a hand. “No, don't tell me. I probably wouldn't understand them."

  “I'm not sure that I do,” Kort told her.

  The movement had made Taya breathless again, and she lay back for a moment, looking up at the expanse of sky beyond the leaves, framed on three sides by the house. “Where is Merkon at the moment?” she asked. It was easily seen as a moving point of light when it passed overhead, even in daytime.

  “Over Sharvia. It's in eclipse right now. It won't be visible here again until late tomorrow."

  Taya stared upward for a few seconds longer, then lowered her head to look into the clear water of the pond. But this time she didn't seem to be seeing the fish. Finally, she fixed her gaze back on Kort. When she spoke, he got the feeling that this was not something that had just occurred to her, but that she had been leading up to it.

  “I want to go back there,” she announced.

  “Back where?"

  “Back home. To Merkon."

  Kort stared at her. This was so unexpected that for once he seized up to a degree that did practically slow his thinking down to almost human speed.

&nbs
p; Taya waited a few seconds for some kind of response from him, then seemed to give up. “It's my whole childhood,” she went on. “Where I was born ... or whatever you'd call it. I want to see it all again. Haven't you heard of eels and fish that get a compulsion at the end of life to return to where they came from? I feel like an eel. I want to go back."

  “But...” Kort finally pulled himself out of the multiplicity of loops that seemed to have taken over, and shook his head. “Traveling? ... That kind of distance?You're not up to it."

  “What distance? You've only got to get me to an orbital flyer, and there are plenty of those. From there it wouldn't be much farther than going back into the house. Jasem told me the newer ones are much gentler than the original lander.” The determined expression that had crept over her face softened to one of amusement. “Why, what's the matter? Surely you're not worried about the effects on my health? Excuse me if I'm being indelicate, Kort, but that would be rather preposterous.” She was unable to contain a laugh at the thought, which brought on a bout of coughing again.

  “It's just that ... this is your home now. You belong here,” Kort said. It sounded lame, even to himself. “You're a part of the people down here."

  Taya stifled the last of the coughs and shook her head. The determination returned. “This is just a place that I've been dwelling. Out there is my home. I am not a part of the people down here. They call us Star Children—and me more than any of them.” She had to pause, her chest heaving with the emotion that she felt. “I don't want to end it being owned as a piece of them. They've had as much as I'm prepared to give. No more obligations, Kort. Azure owes me now.” Kort regarded her dubiously. She lay her head back again, but he waited, sensing there was more.

  Taya looked up at the sky again, and then turned her head back toward him. “Do you know why some of us were able to achieve Insight out there? It was the peace, the stillness. That was what the Ancients had learned to create in their minds, which was lost in the violence that came after the comet.” She looked down at the pond again and waved a hand toward it. “It's like the water. When it's still, you can see through it to what lies beneath. Agitated and disturbed, it let's you see nothing. That's what I want to know, just one more time—that stillness among the stars."

  2

  Taya used to call it the window room. It had a large rectangular port looking out from the side of Merkon, with a wide sill below. This was where she used to sit staring out for hours, wondering why everything outside Merkon was so different from everything inside. Kort stood watching silently as she stared out again now, letting the sight trigger again images that he was still able to retrieve from long ago. Other than that the child who had become a girl was now an aged woman, not a lot had changed. The stars and the colored nebulas were as clear and bright, and their pattern changed only slightly from what it had become by the time Merkon reached Vaxis. Only the sliver of Azure's sunlit side was truly different—but at least it kept itself unobtrusive, down in a corner of the frame.

  She had kept this group of rooms for her own private use while the children were growing up through the final part of the voyage, and so they had remained virtually unchanged while the machines remodeled elsewhere to create accommodation for the new population. And then, after planetfall and the subsequent move down to Azure, the machines had closed down those parts, not quite sure what to do with them. From time to time over the years after that, ones, twos, or small groups would return to look again upon the places that brought memories of running feet and laughing voices, some, later, bringing their own children to see the city that sails in the sky, of which they had heard so many stories. And so the rooms and corridors where the original Star Children had grown became a kind of shrine, preserved for remembrance.

  Kort himself found that the experience of coming back induced strange stirrings in him that he had been unprepared for. Since his role had always been that of serving as Taya's tutor and guardian, and in later years her companion, he had never, unlike the other mec-minds, had reason to equip himself with multiple bodies. As a consequence, he tended to localize his sense of “self” to a greater degree than they did, and to identify with the focal center of senses serving the only body he had. So despite the fact that “he” had been up here, in Merkon, all the time, his sensation of having come back to a place after a long absence was compelling. And this in turn helped him understand better what had brought Taya back. He understood it because he could feel it too.

  At first he had expected her to want to spend her last days where she had spent most of her life, and surrounded by her own kind, because that was the way with the Azureans. But what they really sought in this time of facing an uncertainty that machines could have no hint of, he realized now, was an echo of the security and reassurance they had known in childhood. But Taya's childhood had been different from theirs. She had grown up alone. For her, that security and reassurance came with peace and solitude.

  Well, not quite solitude. Her and Kort.

  Taya's head turned suddenly, one way then the other, searching along the sill. “Kort?"

  “I'm here."

  “Where's Rassie? I left her here. She was supposed to tell me when Vaxis starts getting bigger.” Her voice was thinner now, coming distantly between long silences in which she seemed to be seeing things from long ago. Apparently it sometimes happened that way. The Azureans said that minds with no future left to contemplate relived their past.

  “I think she's asleep in the sleeping room,” Kort said. “Perhaps we shouldn't disturb her."

  “Did she like the blue dress I made her?"

  “She said it was very pretty."

  “Next I'm going to make her a broach to wear with it ... silver, with dark stones.... And shoes. Silver too, like mine. She'll need new shoes."

  “I'll see what I can do."

  Taya fell silent again, then turned stiffly in her chair. “Oh Kort, you don't know what a pretty dress is.” She frowned, and her eyes cleared for the moment. “Have I been rambling?"

  “Oh, not really. I'd call it more, waking-dreaming."

  Taya looked around, and at the blackness beyond the window. “So which is this now? I've lost track."

  “How can I tell you? If it's the dream, then I'm part of it too so I wouldn't know either. Either way I'll say the same thing."

  Taya sank back and exhaled heavily. “You're being impossibly logical.... I think it's a dream. Everything's in pieces and keeps jumping about like a dream.” She stared out and seemed to lose herself in the stars for a while. “I've a strange feeling that I'm going to wake up soon. That kind of restlessness you get, when you know the dream is breaking up.... It's odd about dreams, isn't it?"

  “What's that?"

  A protracted silence. Kort wondered if she had heard.

  “You can know you're in one, but you've forgotten where you'll wake up.... I can't remember what else there is."

  She was starting to sound the way Mystic did sometimes, when he expounded his theories of an afterlife. He'd gotten the idea from the Azureans. Mystic argued that there had to be an afterlife for bio-minds, since it followed logically from the fact of their mortality. Logician said it didn't follow at all, but that didn't seem to bother Mystic in the least. He promptly shrugged it off, saying that logic wasn't everything, anyway.

  Machine minds dreamed too sometimes. Visual processing centers could activate spontaneously when external inputs were temporarily shut down to consolidate new memory linkages. Mystic read all kinds of significance into the images that arose, but Skeptic had never been convinced that they meant anything.

  “I had a dream about a big swan once,” Kort said. “I always thought it must have had something to do with the lander. I never did figure out a connection, though....” He saw that Taya was fading again and not hearing him, and left it at that.

  “I would have married Samir, you know,” she said distantly. “We would have had children too, like the others. If only I hadn't gone back for
Cariette when she fell.... He did it to save me, didn't he?"

  “Then you must remember him that way."

  “You would have got Cariette.... Was it my fault, do you think?"

  She looked across. Kort shook his head firmly. “Of course not. Everything was confusing. Nobody knew what was happening."

  “Such a waste of a young life."

  “But you've saved a whole world of lives. The fear and the violence are almost gone from Azure. Everything that the Ancients once were will arise again now ... and more. And it was you, more than anyone, who brought that to pass."

  Taya seemed troubled at that, frowning and going over his words. “Not I, Kort. What would I have been without the machines?"

  “What could the machines alone have brought to the kind of world that Azure was?"

  “They called you the Silver Gods."

  “Yes—gods who served the Star Mother and her children. We may have created the bodies, but those were just the vehicles. The Ancients came alive on Azure again in you."

  A second or two went by; then Taya's eyes cleared again and widened. She seemed about to say something, but changed her mind and raised her face to look at Kort searchingly. Something in his words had affected her strangely. He started to frame a question, but saw that she wouldn't have heard it. He waited, unsure what to expect.

  “That was it ... why it was there. That was it's purpose.” Her voice was a whisper, but beneath it there lay a firmness that Kort hadn't heard for days.

  “What? ... Taya, what are you talking about,” he asked her.

  But her gaze remained distant. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, directed straight at him, but she was seeing something else.