by Mary Gentle
Please, call me Isobel.
I. Napier-Grant
* * *
Message: #218 (ING)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 10.32 a.m.
From: Longman@
Dear Isobel,
Has Pierce told you that the editor of the second edition of ASH, Vaughan Davies, has reappeared after being missing, thought dead, for sixty years?
Can you confirm what Pierce has told me about the status of your archaeological seabed site off the coast of Tunisia?
Does that have any connection with your reluctance to allow outside film teams in?
Or, is Pierce under a lot of stress?
– Anna
* * *
Message: #385 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 11.03 a.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna,
From a cursory glance at the files, I do not disagree substantially with anything that Pierce has written to you.
This will perhaps answer your last question.
As for myself… I am stunned. Didn’t Pierce make a joke that one day he and I would send you the Ratcliff-Napier-Grant theory of Scientific Miracles? What Tami Inoshishi and Jamie Hewlett are speculating, now, is not so far from that, perhaps.
If my theoretical physicist colleagues are right, it is deep consciousness, at the level of the species-mind, that in a sense _creates_ the universe. Imagine a constant process by which the wave-front of Possibility (random unordered chaos) is, moment by moment, collapsed from all the states in which it _might_ exist into the one in which it _does_ exist. In short, a process by which the Possible is constantly becoming the Real. That is time: that is how we experience the universe. And, Tami states with amazing self-confidence, the cause of the wave-front’s collapse into a stable ‘present’ at the moment we experience as ‘now’ is the _perception_ of it, by the consciousness of a species (that perception being an active, not a passive perception).
And with Pierce’s translated manuscripts in mind, I mentioned jokingly, to both Tami and James this morning, that this possible ability to collapse the wave-front would have to be genetic ability. Tami, seriously, said that it would not even be difficult to see how this could arise. It would be one of the greater evolutionary advances possible, to have a universe which is stable, in which effect follows cause, in which what you did yesterday stands a good chance of being valid today.
Not a conscious ability, she said. It would take place on a subatomic level; on a level as instinctive as photosynthesis in a plant, or the heartbeat in a human being.
I wish Pierce were here on the ship, but I shall have to wait until the helicopter returns to ask him – I wonder if one can speculate that reality, before the human species became intelligent, was more flexible, less able to confine itself to one possibility out of the infinite number of states in which the universe can exist. I should like to ask him if this might not account for why every human culture has a mythic pre-history, a legendary past, before ‘history’ itself begins?
For all that I know – and this is why I am reluctant to confine these discoveries to a book or film documentary; I am seriously thinking of throwing this site open to interdisciplinary investigation: shipping in theorists from _every_ field – for all I know, all life has a certain limited ability to collapse random possibility into predictable reality. Plants, dolphins, birds: each tries to affect its environment favourably. The most basic form of this _must_ be the perception of the subatomic ‘building blocks’ of reality, at the moment of ‘now’, as neither unstable nor random, but as order and pattern and sequence.
I am an archaeologist, not a physicist; and I watch and listen to Tami and James with open-mouthed astonishment. Before he left this morning, Pierce said to me that they do sound like a Ratcliff-Napier-Grant Theory of Scientific Miracles. You have only to say that there could exist a genetic ability to _consciously_ collapse the possible states of the universe into the Real – would not that be a ‘miracle’? Posit that such an ability could carry sufficient genetic defects that it hardly ever survives conception and birth. And then I look at Piercers translations and find myself thinking, there you have the Rabbi, and Ildico, and the Faris, and (one supposes) the Visigothic ‘Prophet Gundobad’, who is unidentified in this history because it is not this history in which he existed.
I have spent most of my adult life aware of how very little solid evidence of our past there is left, and, how very _careful_ one must be in interpreting what does exist and can be discovered. Were you not in London – were you here, just off the coast of North Africa, with an _impossible_ site a thousand metres below your feet – then you might understand why I don’t dismiss these speculations of a ‘fracture’ in history.
I do not say that I give credence to them, either.
And then, of course, there are the practical consequences. I had hoped to get past Christmas before a public statement became necessary, but I can see that I may have to revise my opinion.
I. Napier-Grant
* * *
Message: #219 (ING)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 11.36 a.m.
From: Longman@
Isobel –
You loaned Pierce an assistant, and got him a helicopter. You must give credence to something.
– Anna
* * *
Message: #388 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 03.15 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Pierce has radioed in. Transcript of relevant part of message.
I. Napier-Grant
> Everything’s grounded.
> It was bad enough getting off the ship.
> We are back in Tunis. If I can’t hire a jeep, or buy a bloody
> camel, I am prepared to WALK into the desert.
> Low-angled sunset light is as good as dawn.
* * *
Message: #390 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 06.15 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
Nothing.
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #221 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 06.36 p.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
What do you mean, NOTHING?
– Anna
* * *
Message: #391 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 07.59 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
I mean the quotidian, I suppose. The everyday, the mundane. Nothing to get worked up about. No, there is nothing in the desert south of here. Isobel’s worn out her welcome with my use of military helicopters, trailing – once flight restrictions were finally lifted – through the airspace between here and the Atlas Mountains.
There may be something buried under residential areas, or under industrial plants; who knows? Certainly there were no archaeological teams on hand when some of these places were built. If there were remains, they’re gone, obliterated. Or, more likely, there was nothing; the manuscript ‘evidence’ is mere symbolism, the metallurgy reports simple human error.
What did you expect me to find you, Anna? A glowing pyramid?
Sorry.
I must confess, I had hoped for SOMETHING. A few ridges in the earth, visible at sunset or dawn. It wouldn’t be much to ask, would it, that a shadow in the ground should ‘come back’? Just to let us know the ‘Wild Machines’ were not what they plainly are: a mediaeval literary conceit. A mere device.
Isobel’s team are keeping the survey material, but naturally, the land area isn’t their priority right now. Underwater remains, ‘Gothic Carthage’, that’s the priority.
Your book-and-film deal is on course, don’t worry.
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #222 (Pierce Ratcliff)
&n
bsp; Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 08.45 p.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
Damn the ‘book and film deal’. What about you? Are you all right?
I know I’ve done very little, but I’ve talked to the Davies family, in person; I’ve got drawn into this too.
I can’t imagine how you and Dr Isobel are feeling right now, but this isn’t just another book as far as I’m concerned. If there’s anything I can do to help, I will. You know I mean it.
– Anna
* * *
Message: #392 (Anna Longman)
Subject: Ash
Date: 16/12/00 at 08.57 p.m.
From: Ngrant@
Anna –
I know. Thank you.
Yes, I suppose it is difficult to see Tami Inoshishi and James Howlett knee-deep in the image files of this project; talking at machine-gun speed to everybody on the team. I confess that, yes, no one has much time for a mere historian at this point, and yes, my nose is out of joint. I suppose my time will come with the textual evidence.
None of that really matters, I suppose, beside the crashing disappointment. I was so CERTAIN that we were going to find remnants of the ‘Wild Machines’, or at the very least, the site where they existed. The ‘machina rei militaris’, when we get it free for examination – and I imagine that’s going to take months, if not years – will answer some questions. But, like Isobel’s golem, I fear it will be dumb about how and why it moved.
E pur si muove: Nevertheless, it moves. As Galileo said, in rather different circumstances!
Scholarly jests aside, I feel very bitter. I was so sure. You see, once the basic premise is accepted, none of it is unreasonable. My first draft of the ‘Afterword’ says as much, and I am going to let you see it. This was based on ‘Fraxinus’, and the discovery of the ‘clay walker’, before we found the Sible Hedingham document, so it is unrevised:-
AFTERWORD to the 3rd edition: ASH: THE LOST HISTORY OF BURGUNDY
(Excerpt:) (iii) THEOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY: THE IMPLICATIONS OF ‘FRAXINUS ME FECIT’
…the mediaeval mind behind the ‘Fraxinus’ manuscript couches its description of the various Carthaginian machines in quasi-religious, quasi-mythological terms, where, for example, it speaks of the ‘soul’ of Fr Godfrey Maximillian becoming ‘trapped in the Stone Golem’. We, with the benefit of a vocabulary belonging to twentieth-century artificial intelligence, would more properly refer to this in terms of the neural pattern of his personality becoming uploaded into, or imprinted on, the machina rei militaris at a moment of great physical and mental trauma. One might speculate that the proximity of Ash at the moment of Godfrey Maximillian’s death, herself a genetic conduit to the machina rei militaris, might have some as-yet-undetermined causal link with this unique event.
Similarly, the autonomous ‘Wild Machines’ are described in spiritual and religious terms. However, it is possible to make another translation, different from the dramatised one I have used in the body of the text, translating ‘Fraxinus’ literally, but with a vocabulary not yet available in 1476. This is an amended excerpt from Ash’s ‘download’ at Carthage:
The Wild Machines do not know their own origin, it is lost in their primitive memories. They suspect it was humans, building religious structures ten thousand years ago, who accidentally ‘put rocks in order’ – constructed ordered, [pyramid-]shaped edifices of silt-bricks and stone [silicon]. Large enough structures [of silicon] to absorb spirit-force [electromagnetic energy] from the sun. From that initial order and structure came spontaneous mind [self-aware intelligence]. The first primitive sparks of [electromagnetic] force began to organise [in solid state networks], creating the ferae natura machinae [silicon-based ‘machine’ intelligences].
Five thousand years ago, those primitive minds [proto-intelligences] became conscious. After that, they could begin to evolve themselves deliberately. The Wild Machines manipulated the energies of the spirit-world [drew upon solar electromagnetic energy], to the point where [visible-spectrum] light began to be blocked out in the immediate region around them. As they become more structured, organised and powerful, so their ability to draw power from the nearest and greatest source in the heavens [extract and store this form of solar energy] became more efficient: the darkness spread. This [North African coast] became a land of stone and twilight [solar-energy ‘shadow’]: vast monuments and pyramids under an eternally starry sky.
[The machine intelligences] knew that humanity and animals existed; they registered their weak little souls [neuro-electric fields]. They were unable to establish direct communication until the advent of the Prophet Gundobad. After Gundobad’s death, it was not until Leofric’s family developed the Stone Golem [solid-state tactical computer] that the Wild Machines had a reliable channel by which they could communicate with humanity, and not just its wonder-workers [human minds capable of consciously collapsing the local quantum state]. They hid behind the voice of the [tactical computer], easing their suggestions [into the data], manipulating Leofric’s ancestors into beginning a breeding programme.
The Visigoth saint, Prophet Gundobad, whose relics [surviving DNA material] were used in the machina rei militaris and whose bloodline eventually produced the Faris and Ash, was one of those very, very few people (like Our Lord the Green Christ) [first history] who have the power to perform miracles [individually alter the basic fabric of reality]. What the secret breeding [genetic engineering] was designed to produce was not someone who could speak at a distance to the Stone Golem [perform an at-a-distance neuro-electric or neuro-chemical? download from the tactical computer] – although it was necessary they be able to [communicate through the computer], since that is the only link between the Wild Machines and humanity. What the Wild Machines were trying to breed was another miracle-worker [human capable of consciously affecting the quantum foam]. A Gundobad. One that would be under their control, and subject to the command [immense electromagnetic pulse] they planned [to emit] to trigger their evil miracle [consciously guided alteration of the basic fabric of probable reality].
* * * * * * * *
(Excerpt:) (vi) GENETICS AND THE MIRACULOUS: BREEDING SCHRODINGER’S CAT
(Revised passage, after discovery of the Sible Hedingham ms:)
…In this past history which we have lost, the ability to consciously, deliberately collapse the wave-front could arise spontaneously. In that first history, despite the catastrophic genetic links, it is just possible that a tiny conscious talent could be bred, to be strong enough to be effective – hence the priests’ genuine small miracles; hence the bloodline that House Leofric produced among its slaves and the Faris.
Conversely, the ability to prevent the ‘miraculous’ happening, to prevent the wave-front being collapsed into anything but the most probable quotidian reality, might also conceivably arise as a spontaneous genetic mutation: hence the nature of the Ducal bloodlines in Burgundy.
But, what happened after everything changed?…
I am not sure, now, why I was so certain that some trace of the Wild Machines must remain, after such a fracture in the universe’s history as we seem to see the traces of, here. Purely, I suppose, this question –
If there had been no ‘black miracle’, we should not be seeing these traces of a fracture in history. But, if the Wild Machines precipitated the Faris into causing the fracture and altering the fabric of the universe, then why is there no trace of them having survived it?
If you want to wipe the human race out of history, presumably you want to be around afterwards to take advantage!
What HAPPENED?
– Pierce
* * *
Message: #223 (Pierce Ratcliff)
Subject: Ash
Date: 17/12/00 at 03.10 a.m.
From: Longman@
Pierce –
Sorry, shouldn’t be posting in the early hours, can’t think straight, _but_
If the Carthage site and the messenger-golem are what yo
u say they are, you don’t mean
>> What HAPPENED?
You mean: what IS STILL HAPPENING?
What will happen if you fly over the desert *again, * in, say, a month’s time? What will you see *then?*
– Anna
PART FIFTEEN
25 December–26 December AD 1476
‘Ex Africa semper aliquid novi’1
I
Ash felt the wind from the company tower’s door, blowing in past the group of knights: keen, and with a bitter, damp edge to it. Bewilderment gave way to clarity with a speed that surprised her. Kill her and the Wild Machines do nothing. For the next twenty years. Minimum.
She said, “We have to execute her, right now.”
The Earl of Oxford nodded soberly. “Yes, madam. We do.”
She saw Jonvelle’s gaze go past her, and turned her head.
Floria walked towards them, stripping ivy-leaves from her shoulders; Robert Anselm close behind. The Burgundian, Jonvelle, bowed to his Duchess.
“What’s this?” Floria demanded.
Ash quickly looked to see where Fernando del Guiz was – a bare yard away: stark amazement on his face. Angelotti stood at the German priest’s side, one hand on the bollock dagger at his belt.
“The Faris is here,” Ash said flatly.
“Here?”
“You got it.”
“Here in Dijon?”
“Yes!” There was an audience, Ash saw, but nothing to be done about it. The company’s archers and men-at-arms formed a tight-packed circle, avidly listening. Euen Huw, stripping off ivy-creeper and his ‘Saracen’ chemise, pushed in beside Angelotti; Rickard, open-mouthed, beside Ash herself.
“Tell her, my lord,” Ash appealed to de Vere.
“Madam Duchess, report says that while we were convening with the King-Caliph, a party of unarmed Visigoth slaves approached the north-east gate. The guards did not fire on them; and were even less likely to do so when they saw, as they thought, Captain-General Ash coming back in under their escort.” Oxford nodded to Ash. “The Visigoth woman has chopped off her hair and dirtied her face. It will have been enough to get her in. All but a half-dozen of the slaves went back to the Visigoth camp; the woman then sits herself down and demands to speak to the Duchess of Burgundy, and to Ash, to whom – she says – she surrenders.”
