by Geoff Ryman
The vessel was alive and linked to Milena. It knew what she desired and could consult her viruses for genetic codes. Then, by thinking, it altered the genetic code of its own cells. It grew flowers out of itself, mixing memory and desire.
As Milena was about to do.
She was smiling, no longer giddy with weightlessness, but expectant and nervous. There was to be a test of the Reformation equipment. A single image was to be cast. Milena was going to imagine a rose. It was to be a rose that would fill the sky below.
'What happens next?' Mike Stone asked. He stood stock-still behind her, his mind maintaining the position of the Bulge in orbit.
'Well,' said Milena. 'The area of focus is huge. So the Consensus is going to help map it out for me.'
'How?' said Mike Stone.
'With an Angel,' said Milena.
Suddenly there was a tingling underneath her scalp, where she had been made Terminal. 'It's about to happen,' she said.
Information was presented to her, not in words. The information was like an iron weight, very delicately placed in her frail flesh. It was as if the weight of the universe was whispering to her. All the bones of her cheeks and temple seemed to crackle and ache.
The Consensus had spoken.
As if it had breathed out a bubble, something was released. It was small like an orange pip, and Milena felt relief. The great voice had been withdrawn. Milena had the impression of somersaulting, of something rolling towards her. 'It's here,' she whispered. 'The Angel.'
Something seemed to open up in her head.
It was like a curtain going back. The suede walls of the Bulge, the lens of its window, the stars and the Earth all seemed to part, and she was in another existence.
There was no light, no sound, only sensation. The sensation was something like touch. But the touch ran in lines, taut lines between things. Consciousness was extended along them, and whenever thought moved, the lines were strummed, like the strings of a musical instrument.
The Earth was a carefully wound ball of lines which led out from the Earth in all directions. The lines of touch went out to the stars and curved inwards towards the heart of the sun, a nexus of them eight minutes away. The lines pierced Milena's body and the body of the Bulge and held them both, falling, falling always towards the Earth, as the Earth fell away.
The lines were gravity. In the fifth dimension, the mathematical description of gravity and electromagnetic phenomena are identical. Infra-red, and ultra-violet, weight and thought. They were all the same thing. The universe was a pun as well.
A web, thought Milena. The universe is a web, like a spider's.
'Hello! Hello!' cried a voice. There was no sound, but words had resonated like music out of the lines. Rising out of the lines, part of the lines, was another consciousness, a personality, imprinted on gravity, where thought and gravity are the same thing.
The Angel rolled towards her, across the lines, making them throb. The Angel laughed, and the laughter thrilled its way through the lines. The laughter felt like the strings of a cello being struck by a deaf child.
'Light waves, the Angel said. 'X-rays, radio waves. They're all here. So what do you think? Isn't it lovely?'
'You were human,' said Milena aloud.
'Well ta,' said the Angel. 'Better than being called a spider, I expect.'
Milena saw a face in memory. The Angel was showing her a memory. Milena saw the face of a cheerful man with red hair and a creased face, an ageing face. He was wrapping a blue tie around itself, one hundred years ago.
'Your name was Bob,' said Milena.
'Got it in one,' said the Angel. 'Bob the Angel. It's an honour and a privilege, Milena, an honour and a privilege. Ugly-looking geezer, wasn't I? Mind you the wife was no oil painting either.'
Another memory was spun out of gravity. Milena saw a cheerful, pink-faced woman with a double chin and clean false teeth.
'But you enjoy it,' said Milena, with relief. He enjoyed being an Angel.
'Ah wouldn't change it for the world. One thing though. I wish my kids could have known how their old man ended up.' He strummed the lines of gravity.
He had wanted to be a musician. He played in bars after work. He had had three children and had kept their photographs on his desk as the world collapsed. Milena saw the photographs as well. Three cheerful, blonde children, with pre-Rhodopsin faces the colour of a photographic flash.
Milena sensed something else. Behind all the memories, between the words, something else swam like a fish in dark water.
'You're a composite,' Milena realised. They had given Bob part of someone else's personality as well.
'That's my mate George. Strong silent type. He was a nuclear astrophysicist.' Bob the Angel imitated a popping sound.
He keeps talking to reassure me, thought Milena.
'That's right. You're sure this isn't all too much for you?'
Milena shook her head.
'Say hello, George. See? Silent. I do all the talking. George never says anything. So it's not too strange, having him all tangled up inside here with me. It's just that from time to time I start talking in parsecs. You ready to go on, Milena?'
She nodded. She felt his pleasure.
'Just look at this. I want you to see this.'
And the Angel flung himself out again, into the lines.
He passed along them, like a wave through rope, accelerating. He hurtled himself along the lines, a disturbance in them. Milena could feel that there was a traffic in Angels. They were all sighing up and down the lines, speeding away towards the stars. Bob shot past them, through them. They tingled in greeting.
There was a traffic in light as well. Milena didn't recognise it at first. She simply became aware of something in the lines, sizzling its way out of the sun. They struck the earth and reeled shimmying away from its surface, scattered back out into space, like tiny wriggling arrows. Milena could feel those too. She felt them sputtering into space. Light was part of the lines.
And Bob was swinging from line to line, slipping, somersaulting, shaking himself with the silent laughter of Angels. He spun, as if on tiptoe, and suddenly, made of gravity, he gathered the lines of gravity tightly in towards himself. The lines snagged the light, pulling them inward as well.
'Open your eyes, love,' said the Angel.
Milena had not realised that her eyes had been closed. She opened them and saw, with human eyes, the Earth.
She saw the Earth through a gravitational lens. It was as if she looked at it through the bottom of a wine glass. Its blue seas and white clouds, its thin and flimsy cloak of air, were seen as a series of halos, rings of light.
And the Angel let all the lines go, and the universe seemed to boom.
Milena's mouth was hanging open, and she was laughing as if drunk. Her eyes she knew were sparkling, giddy with delight.
The Angel spoke. 'Not bad, I'd say.'
'Wonderful,' said Milena, shaking her head.
'That's the spirit. I love it out here, really, I do. Can you imagine if everyone down there could see this? There wouldn't be any meanness would there? None of this grubbing, get your number 92 and stay in line. None of this, "Here you" if they knock your coat off the hanger.'
The thought was the lines, and the lines were pulling the stars and the sun, the Earth and the Bulge, holding them together through the forces of attraction.
'We're concepting it,' said the Angel. 'By which I mean... oh here,' He passed her a kind of telepathic diagram. It showed Angels rising up from the Earth and travelling the vastness between the stars. There were caravans of Angels, like drops of water sliding on a cobweb. Those in front passed the sensation of where they were to those in the back, one to the other, all the way back to the Consensus. They were making a mental map of the lines.
The map was on a scale of one to one, and overlay reality. For all intents and purposes, it was reality. The fact that the lines had been conceived so far out meant anyone in the net could feel that far out. Mile
na was touching the stars. She felt them flicker, as if against her fingertips.
The map had an end. There was a boundary beyond which the Angels had not travelled, though the map was spreading at the speed of light, like a wobbling jelly.
'We just hit Sirius. Thirty four years out. Sorry, George. Bloody parsecs. Stickler for parsecs is old George. So we got the Serious Dog and we got Alfie Century as well. Not too bad. Not too good either.'
The Angels travelled at the speed of light and so went back in time. They passed the map back more slowly, into their future. They twisted gravity to break the asteroids, and compress them, heating them, melting them, hauling out the metal into space where it twisted like putty, cooling to be sent back to Earth.
'So how long before we get back to the beginning? Tuh. Long enough. Well before the sun goes Nova. And what will we take with us? Just ourselves. Just gravity and time. I'll tell you something, Milena. I used to think I was made of meat. Then I got up here and I thought. Oh no, I'm not. I'm really rather rarefied. I'm made out of gravity and time. Gravity makes the meat, gravity makes the thought. Time makes events. We're strung out along gravity and time like lines of laundry. Back at the beginning, when we get there, the only event left is going to be us. Gravity in quantum vacuum, with just enough time for something to happen in. Then — whoosh. We start the universe. Now look at this!'
The Angel divided. He peeled himself away in sections, like an orange. There was even a zest, a spray of personality that freshened. He spread, breaking apart into smaller and smaller selves, going up, down, sideways, all of him shivering in the wires.
He was defining a cube. He lay himself like eggs at regular intervals, and each point cried aloud a number.
'Plus one! Plus one!'
'Minus two! Minus two!'
'Fifty five! Fifty five!'
Then Bob spoke, in three great voices along three axes of height and width and depth. He was a graph. 'I call them,' the graph said, 'my Cherubim.'
The Cherubim called like seagulls, eager to be heard, to be useful. They were limited creatures, reduced in size and information. A fragment of the whole, that retained the rough pattern of the whole. The area that was defined neatly bounded one half of the Earth which swelled into it, like a great dome. The poles, and two points of the equator touched the outer limits of the cube.
'There you go, Milena,' said the three voices.
The Cherubim still called. 'Plus seven. Plus seven. Four nineteen. Four nineteen.'
'All for you, Milena.'
'Minus one oh two two! Minus one oh two two!'
'That's your stage.'
Milena looked at the Earth, turning slowing through the area that she could now control. Oh! she thought. The thought was too wistful and dim to be dismay. It saw the beauty, it saw the innocence below, it saw the opportunity. The thought was like regret.
'It's called a Comedy,' said the graph. 'Will it be funny?'
'Not funny,' Milena said. 'Just happy. Not the same thing.'
Milena paused. Milena hung back.
She looked at the blue world with human eyes. She felt it through the strings, its surface crumpled, like some old woman's face.
'It's too big,' she said, scowling.
'What you mean, love?'
'It's... sinful.'
There was space, empty and pure, and she was to fill it, with a show. Is there a flower called Hubris?
My name is Milena Shibush. It is a Lebanese name, but my family were from Eastern Europe. My father died. My mother died. They were killed by the virus.
The only virus is us.'
The Cherubim fell silent. The three axes spoke together. 'It isn't just you, you know, Milena. It's all of us. The Consensus. The Consensus is all of us. It wants this. It's the one that's doing it really.'
The stars and the black spaces between them seemed to say that it would be a violation. To make an image the size of heaven, for half of Earth to see.
'Suppose God...' she began to whisper and found she had no conclusion.
'That's a great, big, lonely word,' said Bob the Angel. 'Don't know. He speaks too big. Too many connections. How could you speak to all the stars at once?'
'I'm afraid,' said Milena.
All the stars at once, how could all the stars be dwarfed? Only Earth, little Earth, could be humbled. We humble what is about us. We humble ourselves.
'There's no time like the present love. You've only ever got the present. You can't do it in the past, or go dashing off into the future and hide there. Whenever you did it, it would have to be Now.'
'Has everybody been told?' Milena asked him. 'Do people know this is going to happen?'
'Of course they have, everybody's ready. Everybody wants to see it. This is an event, girl, a real event. They're all looking forward to it.'
'I don't want them to be afraid of it.'
'Their jaws will hit their feet with wonder. And they'll say, look at what we can do. All of us together. But they won't be afraid.'
'Bob. Could you break off for a minute?'
The Angel seemed to darken. 'Sure, love, sure.'
The link in her head seemed to close. She had only one vision, now, of the inside of Christian Soldier, and the garden growing out of his walls. She blinked at it. She had expected the Bulge to look small in comparison with the universe. Instead it seemed vast, as if the walls of the Bulge were distant nebulae. Mike Stone was the size of Orion. His hands were clasped behind his back and he rocked nervously on his heels.
'Is something wrong, Milena?' he asked.
'No,' she gave her head a shake. 'No, just nerves. It's like a dream.'
'Maybe this will help,' he said.
From behind his back, Mike Stone passed her the rose that Rolfa had given to her. It was the rose from Chao Li Gardens. It even bobbed in her hand. 'I just saw it growing on the wall,' he said. 'Maybe you need it for reference.'
'No,' said Milena, grimly. 'No, I don't need a reference for this.'
There it was, smelling of autumn, the tips of its petals brown with chill, a pale rose marbled with red, an imperfect rose. Milena blinked, and suddenly there were even dew drops on it. We'll call them dew drops.
'Milena?' asked Mike Stone in wonder.
Why, she thought, oh why do I have the rose, Rolfa, and not you? There was an ache in her throat from grief. I have the book and the rose and the music, but I don't have you.
You want to cover the world, Consensus? You want all the stars to see you in your greatness, do you? Well then let them see this, let them see this rose that you killed. You wanted her music, but you wanted it without her. So I will blast you with it, Consensus. Take it. Choke. Thorns scratch your throat.
'OK. Bob, OK,' she said. 'OK. OK.'
The Angel came towards her in wonder. 'Milena?' he asked. 'What's all this?'
She tried to close her mind against him. 'Do you want it or not?'
'Steady on. It's a cold rose, you know. It won't burn, even if you want it to.'
'There are people waiting. They want a show.'
'All right,' said the Angel, soothing. 'But just one promise. We talk later, OK?'
'Yes, yes, come on.' Milena tried to pretend to him that her concentration was something that had to be seized and coralled like a wild horse.
'Countdown,' he said and ripped himself apart, and the Cherubim awoke again in a chorus and the eye in her head opened, and there was the harp, the billions of crisscross strings.
'Now,' she said.
And all the Cherubs pulled, like a net, catching the arrows from the sun and moon. The Cherubim were like crystals. They broke the light apart and reformed it, clutching it to themselves, pierced by the arrows, as if through the breast, dying for love.
Cherubim murdered, love dead. Dead love returned fourfold. Feel the blast. Consensus, this one is for you. Here it comes. Image in her mind, the feel of smooth green stem, brown thorns, slight scent, the chill, the odour of roses and birdshit in pondwater, and the gees
e overhead, Rolfa's fur touching her just lightly on the arm, and the rose.
The memory caught the light, and was held by what it caught. The lens was gravity and gravity was thought and thought was the memory. Light was filtered through memory.
Her eyes were shut again. She opened them, and looked out through the window of the Bulge, and the window blinked, and when it cleared, there was an explosion of pink light that filled the window, pink light wobbling like a jelly, as if to fill the universe. Pink light falling in on itself, tumbling back into form, into focus.
Milena gave a kind of strangled shout. Rosa mundi. Rose of the World. There, over the Earth, filling heaven, and it was her rose. Do you see it, Rolfa? Do you know what it is, do you know what it means? A rose of light the size of the world. The rose of memory was also the rose of anger.
It is rising up over mountains like some new flowering sun. In other places below, at midday, it is misty, high up in blue sky, pale like a daylight moon, pink-white, its shadows the same blue as the sky around it. It will be a pink glow behind monsoons in the south, where I can see them sweeping in arcs over the coastline. And in the east, it will be setting like the sun, streaks of cloud across its face, which it will pinken. In some places, the sun will shine through it, as if the sun wore a collar. Or a crown. Half the world will look up and see it and wonder at the way it shines, and it is shining out of my head, out of memory.
The Earth that is humbled is yours, Consensus.
'It's big, Milena,' said Mike Stone.
Milena smiled a crooked grin. 'That is the general idea, Mike.'
'Roses generally aren't big,' said Mike Stone.
'No,' murmered Milena, almost as silently as the Angel. The rose was huge and angry, and the curling-back petals looked like blubbery lips.
It's a monster, she thought, like the Crabs.
It wasn't supposed to be a rose of arrogance, hubris, or anger, it's supposed to be a rose of love, and a rose of love is small, small enough to be held in someone's hand. This was supposed to be a gift.
And then she thought: a gift to twenty-two billion people, both the adults and the children. A rose for each of them?
