Far Thoughts and Pale Gods

by Greg Bear

  We had been through this before. My teasing seemed a necessary anodyne to him when he bumped up against another delay. “Violation of Third Law,” I said casually.

  He waved that away. “William, you’re an infidel. The Third Law’s a mere bagatelle, like the sound barrier—”

  “What if it’s more like the speed of light?”

  William shut one eye half-way and regarded me balefully. “You’ve laid out the money. If I’m a fool, you’re a worse fool.”

  “From your point of view, I wouldn’t find that reassuring,” I said, smiling. “But what do I know. I’m a dry accountant. Set me out under a clear terrestrial night sky and my brain would freeze.”

  William laughed. “You’re smarter than you need to be,” he said. “Violating the Third Law of thermodynamics—no grief there. It’s a sitting duck, Micko. Waiting to be shot.”

  “It’s been sitting for a long time. Lots of hunters have missed. You’ve missed for three years now.”

  “We didn’t have quantum logic thinkers and disorder pumps,” William said, staring out into the darkness beyond the small window, face lit orange by flashes of light from the arbeiters at work in the pit below.

  “Those pumps make me twitch,” I confessed, not for the first time.

  William ignored that and turned to me, suddenly solemn. “If the council tries to stop Rho, you’d better fight them with all you’ve got. I’m not a Sandoval by birth, Mickey, but by God, this BM better stand by her.”

  “It won’t get that far, William,” I said. “It’s all dust. A burble of politics.”

  “Tell them to cut the damned politics,” William said softly. This was the rallying cry of all the Moon’s families, all our tightly-bound, yet ruggedly individual citizens; how often had I heard that phrase? “This is Rho’s project. If I—if we let her have the Ice Pit for her heads, nobody should interfere. Damn it, that’s what the Moon is all about. Do you believe all you hear about the Logologists?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They certainly don’t think like you and I.”

  I joined William at the window. “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For letting Rho do what she wants.”

  “She’s crazier than I am,” William said with a sigh. “She says you weren’t too pleased at first, either.”

  “It’s pretty gruesome,” I admitted.

  “But you’re getting interested?”

  “I suppose.”

  “That Task-Felder woman made you even more interested.”

  I nodded.

  William tapped the window’s thick glass. “Mickey, Rho has always been protected by Sandoval, by living here on the Moon. The Moon has always encouraged her; free spirit, small population, place for young minds to shine. She’s a little naive.”

  “We’re no different,” I said.

  “Maybe you aren’t, but I’ve seen the rough side of life.”

  I tilted my head, giving him that much. “If by naive, you mean she doesn’t know what it’s like to be in a scrap, you’re wrong.”

  “She knows intellectually,” William said. “And she’s sharp enough that may be all she needs. But she doesn’t know how dirty a fight can get.”

  “You think this is going to get dirty?”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” William said. “Four hundred heads is gruesome, but it isn’t dangerous, and it’s been tolerated on Earth for a century …”

  “Because nothing ever came of it,” I said. “And apparently the toleration is wearing thin.”

  William rubbed thumb and forefinger along his cheeks, narrowing his already narrow mouth. “Why would anyone object?”

  “For philosophical reasons, maybe,” I said.

  William nodded. “Or religious. Have you read Logologist literature?”

  I admitted that I hadn’t.

  “Neither have I, and I’m sure Rho hasn’t. Time we did some research, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged dubiously, then shivered. “I don’t think I’m going to like what I find.”

  William clucked. “Prejudice, Micko. Pure prejudice. Remember my origins. Maybe the Task-Felders aren’t all that forbidding.”

  Being accused of prejudgment irritated me. I decided to change the subject and scratch an itch of curiosity. He had shown the QL to me earlier, but had seemed to deliberately avoid demonstrating the thinker.

  “Can I talk to it?”

  “What?” William asked, then, following my eyes, looked behind him at the table. “Why not? It’s listening to us now. QL, I’d like to introduce my friend and colleague, Mickey Sandoval.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” the QL said, its voice gender neutral, as most thinker voices were. I raised an eyebrow at William. Normal enough, house-trained, almost domestic. He understood my expression of mild disappointment.

  “Can you describe Mickey to me?” he asked, challenged now.

  “In shape and form it is not unlike yourself,” the thinker said.

  “What about his extensions?”

  “They differ from yours. Its state is free and dynamic. Its link with you is not primary. Does he want controlling?”

  William smiled triumphantly. “No, QL, he is not an instrumentality. He is like myself.”

  “You are instrumentality.”

  “True, but for convenience’s sake only,” William said.

  “It thinks you’re part of the lab?” I asked.

  “Much easier to work with it that way,” William assured me.

  “May I ask another question?”

  “Be my guest,” William said.

  “QL, who’s the boss here?”

  “If by boss you mean a node of leadership, there is no leader here. The leader will arise at some later date, when the instrumentalities are integrated.”

  “When we succeed,” William explained, “then there will be a boss, a node of leadership; and that will be the successful result itself.”

  “You mean, QL thinks that if you achieve absolute zero, that will be the boss?”

  William smiled. “Something like that. Thank you, QL.”

  “You’re welcome,” the QL replied.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “I have another question.”

  William extended his hand, be my quest.

  “What do you think will happen if the cells in the Cavity reach absolute zero?”

  The interpreter was silent for a moment, and then spoke in a subtly different voice. “This interpreter is experiencing difficulties translating the QL thinker’s response,” it said. “Do you wish a statement in post-Boolean mathematical symbols by way of direct retinal projection, or the same transferred to a slate address, or an English interpretation?”

  “I’ve already asked this question, of course,” William told me. “I have the mathematics already, several different versions, several different possibilities.”

  “I’d like an English interpretation,” I said.

  “Then please be warned that response changes from hour to hour in significant ways,” the interpreter said. “This might indicate a chaotic wave-mode fluctuation of theory within the QL. In other words, it has not yet formulated an adequate prediction, and cannot. This thinker will present several English language responses, but warns that they are inadequate for full understanding, which may not be possible for organic human minds at any rate. Do you wish possibly misleading answers?”

  “Give us a try,” I said, feeling a sting of resentment. William sat at the manual control console, willing to let this be my own contest.

  “QL postulates that achievement of absolute zero within a significant sample of matter will result in a new state of matter. Since there is a coupling between motion of matter in spacetime and other forces within matter, particularly within atomic nuclei—the principle upon which the force disorder pumps operate—then this new state of matter may be stable, and may require substantial energy input to return to a thermodynamic state. There is a small possibility that this
new state may be communicable by quantum forces, and may induce a similar state in closely associated atoms.”

  I glanced at William.

  “A very small possibility,” William said. “And I’ve protected against it. The copper atoms are isolated in a Penning trap and can’t come in contact with anything else.”

  “Please go on,” I told the interpreter.

  “Another possibility is a hitherto undiscovered coupling between states of spacetime itself and the thermodynamic motion of matter. If thermodynamism ceases within a sample, the nature of spacetime around the sample might change. Quantum ground states could be affected. Restraints on probabilities of atomic positions could induce an alignment of virtual particle activities, with amplification of other quantum effects, including remote release of quantum information normally communicated between particles and inaccessible to non-communicants.”

  “All right,” I said, defeated. “William, I need an interpreter for your interpreter.”

  “What the math says—” William said, eyes shining with what must have been joy or pride, it could not have been sadness, “—is that spacetime just might crystallize.”

  “So?”

  “Spacetime is naturally amorphous, if we can poetically use terms reserved for matter. Crystallized space would have some interesting properties. Information of quantum states and positions normally communicated only between particles—through the so-called exclusive channels—could be leaked. There could even be propagation of quantum information backwards in time.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I said.

  “It would be purely local,” William said. “Fascinating to study. You could think of it as making space a superconductor of information, rather than the highly limited medium it is now.”

  “But is that likely?”

  “No,” William said. “From what I can understand, no QL prediction is likely or unlikely at this point.”

  The Ice Pit farms and support warrens occupied some thirty-five hectares and employed ninety family members. That was moderately large for an isolated research facility, but old habits die hard—on the Moon, each station, large and small, is designed to be autonomous, in case of emergency, natural or political. Stations are more often than not spread so far apart that the habit makes hard sense. Besides, each station must act as an independent social unit, like a village on Earth. The closest major station to us, Port Yin, was six hours away by shuttle.

  I had been assigned twelve possible in-family girlfriends at the age of 13. Two resided at the Ice Pit. I had met one only casually, but the other, Lucinda Bergman-Sandoval, had been a love friend since we were sixteen. Lucinda worked on the farm that grew the station’s food. We saw each other perhaps once a month now, my focus having shifted to extra-family women, as was expected when one approached marriage age. Still, those visits were good times, and we had scheduled a chat dinner date at the farm cafe this evening.

  I’ve never cared much what women look like. I mean, extraordinary beauty has never impressed me, perhaps because I’m no platinum sheen myself. The Sandoval family had long since accepted pre- and post-birth transforms as a norm, like most lunar families, and so no son or daughter of Sandoval BM was actively unpleasant to look at. Lucinda’s family had given her normal birth, and she had chosen a light transform at age seventeen: she was black-haired, coffee-skinned, purple-eyed, slender and tall, with a long neck and pleasant, wide face. Like most lunar kids, she was bichemical—she could go to Earth or other higher gravity environments and adjust quickly.

  We met in the cafe, which overlooked the six hectare farm spread on the surface. Thick field-reinforced windows separated our table from high vacuum; a brass bar circled the enclosure to reassure our instincts that we would not fall off to the regolith or the clear polystone dome below.

  Lucinda was a quiet girl, quick and sympathetic. We talked relationships for a while—she was considering an extra-family marriage proposal from a Nernst engineer named Hakim. I had some prospects but was still barn dancing a lot.

  “Hakim’s willing to be name-second,” she said. “He’s very generous.”

  “Wants kids?”

  “Of course. He told me they could be ex-utero if I was squeamish.” Lucinda smiled.

  “Sounds rad,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s not. Just … generous. I think he’s really sweet on me.”

  “Advantage?”

  She smirked lightly. “Lots. His branch controls Nernst Triple Contracts.”

  “Nernst’s done some work for us,” I said.

  “Do tell,” she instructed me in a friendly but pointed tone.

  “I probably shouldn’t. I haven’t even thought it through …”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “It could be, I suppose. The council president may try to stop something my blood-sister is doing.”

  Lucinda raised her wide, thin eyebrows. “Really? On what grounds?”

  “I’m not sure. The president is Task-Felder …”

  “So?”

  “She’s a Logologist.”

  “So? They have to play by the rules, too.”

  “Of course. I’m not making any accusations … But what do you know about Logologists?”

  Lucinda thought for a moment. “They’re tough on contracts. Daood—that’s Hakim’s brother—he administered a design contract to the Independence Station near Fra Mauro. That’s a Task-Felder station.”

  “I know. I was invited to a barn dance there last month.”

  “Did you go?”

  I shook my head. “Too much work.”

  “Daood says they rode the Nernst designers for eight weeks, jumped them between three different specs. Seemed to be a management lag—Task-Felder niggles from the top down. No independent thinking from on-site managers. Daood was not impressed.”

  I smiled. “We’ve upset some Nernst people ourselves. Last year, on the refrigerator repairs and radiator upgrades.”

  “Hakim mentioned that … Daood said we were saints compared to Task-Felder.”

  “Good to know we’re appreciated by our brother BMs.”

  She mused for a moment. Our food came on an arbeiter delivery cart. “I’ve heard about Io, of course. That was hard to believe. Have you read any of Thierry’s works?” Lucinda asked. “They were popular when we were kids.”

  “I managed to avoid them,” I said. K.D. Thierry, an Earth-born movie producer who called himself a philosopher and acted like a dictatorial guru, had founded Chronopsychology in the late twentieth century, and then had spun it off into Logology.

  “He must have written about three hundred books and LitVids. I read two—Planetary Spirit and Whither Mind? They were pretty strange. He tried to lay down rules for everything from what to dream to toilet training.”

  I laughed. “Why did you read them?”

  Lucinda shrugged. “I used to scan a lot of LitVids. They were in the library—I called them up, paid the fee—about half what most LitVids cost. Lots of pretty video stuff. Sparkling lakes and rivers on Earth … pictures of Thierry riding his solar-powered yacht around the world. That sort of thing. All very attractive to a Moon girl.”

  “Did you read anything that explained what happened on Io?”

  “I remember something about Thierry being told by an angel that humans were the spawn of warring gods, super beings. They lived before the birth of our Sun. He said that deep within us were pieces of the personalities of some of these gods.”

  “I’ll buy that,” I said.

  “The rest of the god’s minds had been imprisoned, buried by their enemies under sulfur on the ‘Hellmoon.’ They were waiting for us to liberate them and join with them again. Something like that.” She shook her head.

  I knew the rest of the story; it was in files on recent history I had studied in secondary. In 2090, Logologists on Mars had taken out a thousand-year development lease on Io from the Triple; violent, useless Io, visited only twice in history by human explorers. The new lea
seholders set up a human-occupied station on Io in 2100. The station was lost with all occupants during the formation of a new Pelean-class sulfur lake. Seventy-five loyal Logologists died and were never recovered; they are still there, entombed in black sulfur. The Logologists never admitted to looking for lost gods.

  I shuddered. “I didn’t know what they were after. That’s interesting.”

  “It’s spooky,” Lucinda said. “I stopped reading him when I realized he thought he was writing history. These folks think he’s practically a god himself.”

  “They do?”

  “You’re dealing with them, and you don’t know what they think?”

  “My shortcomings are legendary,” I said, raising my hands. “What kind of god?”

  “They say he didn’t die, that he was in perfect health. He just left his body behind like a husk. Now he’s supposed to advise the Logologists through spiritual messages to his chosen disciples, each generation. He anoints them with blue cold, they say. Whatever that is. So what does Rho want to do that they don’t like?”

  “My lips are sealed. Rho gives the press conferences around here.”

  “But the president knows.”

  “I presume she must.”

  “Thanks for trusting me, Micko.” She gave me a narrow grin to let me know she was teasing. Still, I felt uncomfortable.

  “I can say I don’t like any of it,” I confessed. “It makes things a lot more complicated.”

  “Better get on your homework, then,” she advised.

  The deeper I dug into Logology, the more fascinated I became. And repelled—though fascination won out in the end. Here was a creed without a coherent philosophy—a system without a sensible metaphysic. Here was puerile hypothesis and even outright fantasy masquerading as revealed truth. And it was all based on a single supposed insight into the human mind, something so audacious—and so patently ridiculous—that it was fascinating.

  K.D. Thierry had exploited everybody’s deeply held wish to participate in the unfolding of a Big Event. In this he was little different from other prophets and messiahs; the real differences lay in how much we knew about Thierry, and how ridiculous it seemed that a man such as he could be vouchsafed any great truth.