Cenotaxis

by Sean Williams

  "Behold the man you call your God! Not so grand now, is he?"

  The assembly was silent and unmoving. All I heard was the susurrus of breath, multiplied a thousand times over.

  "I am proud of you," I told them, moved by their resolute stillness. "You are the true inheritors of Earth!"

  A rifle butt knocked me to the ground, but not before my words were picked up by the frags nearest me and passed in whispers through the ranks. Too late, my cordon hauled me unceremoniously from view. I heard the murmur rising through the walls as rough hands thrust me to the ground.

  "He's a one-man crusade," commented a massive, heavily scarred man leaning against one wall with arms folded across his barrel chest. "Look at him, taking all our glory."

  "Save it, Render." Helwise was there too, and a fourth person I hadn't seen before: a slight blonde woman with green eyes. She watched me closely as I struggled to my feet and stood, waiting with dull certainty for the next blow. The solid iron links of my chains were supposed, I assumed, to be symbolic, yet in a strange way I had never before felt more triumphant.

  Here they were, the members of the pretender king's inner circle, all in one spot—and I among them! If only I'd had a bomb, or a single word that would convert them all.

  "Is everyone on this fucking planet a frag?" Helwise asked as the sound of the crowd grew louder still.

  "There's no shame in that," I told her.

  "This guy isn't a frag," said one of the Freers. "He's a Prime."

  "There's no shame in that, either."

  "I know," Bergamasc agreed, and I understood for the first time, then, that he was a Prime too, a deliberate throwback to the oldest form of humanity. He circled me like a hungry predator. "Why do they follow you?"

  "They follow God."

  "Whose will is handed to them by you, I suppose."

  "The two are inseparable."

  "I see. So what other end do you envisage than me crushing your resistance and making the Earth my own?"

  "Your role in this drama is less important than you imagine."

  "You're going to tell me that I'm acting in accordance with God's will, whether I want to or not." Before I could shake my head, he ploughed on, "Were I to retreat to orbit and sterilize the surface of this pain-in-the-arse planet, that would obviously be what God wanted."

  There was no point arguing with his primitive misconceptions, or his sarcasm. "You won't do that."

  "No." He moved in closer, still circling, so close we almost brushed against each other. "But the temptation is very real. You have to understand that. I've taken such measures before, in the best interests of the galaxy. I'm not going to let one tiny world stand in my way."

  "Earth is more than just a world. It's an idea. It's the birthplace of God."

  I would have told him more, perhaps, but his patience had run out. "Enough about God! I've been running that scam myself for longer than I care to remember. There's no more fervent atheist than a prophet who doesn't believe in himself."

  He backed off, snapping his fingers at the Freers. "Take him away. I'll work out what to do with him later."

  The scarred soldier leaned in as I was manhandled through the door. "You'll soon be broken down," he said, "like all the rest."

  I stared resolutely at the long, metal corridor ahead.

  Later, the blonde woman came to see me.

  "My name is Emlee Copas," she said, standing comfortably on the other side of the clear plastic pane separating me from freedom, dressed in a loose blue shipsuit bearing no visible markings of rank or honor. "Imre's agreed to let me talk to you because I'm a Prime too. So's Render, who you spoke to earlier. He's an Old-Timer, in fact, with a greater claim on this planet than either you or Imre will ever have. I find that ironic, don't you?"

  I stared at her, holding the silence until it became uncomfortable.

  "There's actually something I want to ask you," she went on. "The frag situation fascinates us. We've only seen a handful of planets populated by nothing but frags, and they've always been something special. We've dissected a couple of yours who were killed in battle and discovered that they, like the frags of every other Fort in the galaxy, were connected by Q loop technology, the same thing targeted by the Slow Wave. So whatever was going on here, it was stopped dead by the same thing that killed the Continuum. What was going on here, Jasper? Was the whole population of the planet linked into the mind of a single Fort?"

  This was my first attempt to explain. "Let me tell you something, Emlee Copas. There's no difference between you and my followers. We're all part of a greater whole. By that I don't mean the galactic civilization you belong to—although I'm sure your leader has you firmly convinced that this is indeed the whole of human experience—but the inner whole, aspirations that speak to more than just territory and possessions."

  "I have a brain of my own," she said with a scowl. "I make up my own mind."

  "Then hear what I have to say. Civilization is important; don't get me wrong on that point. We wouldn't be here now but for that step up the ladder. But it's only one step of many, and you can see how easy it is to trip up, now your Forts are gone.

  "Continuity and synchrony are the ties that hold any civilization together, for many diverse and widely separate layers must work at different rates to achieve the greatest good, sometimes without even knowing it. Take away those ties, and the fabric unravels.

  "At the galactic level, across hundreds and thousands of years, those ties are stretched to their breaking points. If humanity is to evolve any further, it must find new ways to connect those far-flung parts."

  "What kind of ties are you talking about, Jasper? Better communications? FTL travel? Is that what you were working on here?"

  I shook my head in irritation. "This is where the metaphor breaks down. You're like an architect designing a skyscraper large enough to reach the moon by simply adding more floors. That's not nearly enough. Everything—foundations, materials, design—must be fundamentally reassessed. That's why, after almost a million civilized years, we're still struggling to connect the dots."

  "But you've worked it out, I gather. You know what the answer is."

  "I am the answer, Emlee. My very existence is proof that humanity can make the next step—from drawing a sketch to lifting the pencil right off the page and becoming the mind that makes the sketch unfold."

  "Is this where God fits in?" she asked, frowning.

  "God is the face humanity sees reflected in the void."

  "Its own face or something else?"

  "Its own face."

  "And what does it look like, Jasper?"

  "It's beautiful." Rapture filled me. "Abandon the old ways, Emlee Copas, and adopt the new, for what once was, and is, and will be are one."

  I was standing with my face almost touching the plastic pane, as close to her as I could possibly come. If I could convince her, she would convince Bergamasc, and my real work would begin.

  "I don't think that's going to happen any time soon," she said, her posture relaxed and unimpressed. "But give it your best shot, by all means. Or was that it? Are you done now? Can we move on to more important things?"

  She was utterly unmoved. Naturally, I thought, Bergamasc wouldn't send someone easily converted to be my first interrogator.

  "My work is far from finished," I said, stepping back from the plastic barrier. "And there is nothing more important on Earth than that work. You'll come to realize it, in your own time. I know it."

  "You won't find us as easy to convince as a bunch of lost frags, believe me."

  "I wouldn't have it any other way."

  She left, and I spent the next four days in the cell alone.

  Memory consumes me. I am unused to reviving my personal past so determinedly, for so long. There's rarely any necessity, thanks to the way the tangle of time unspools around me. I find the two difficult to separate on occasion, and distracting to an extreme.

  While hiking among a landscape of reds and orang
es, I unexpectedly experience another moment of genuine disorientation, one in which I do not know where or when I am. My limbs feel heavy. My mind is fogged. I'm lying on my side, curled into a ball, on a hard surface that is vibrating rapidly against my skin. I can't move my hands or feet. There appears to be bag over my head. I smell ozone and sweat.

  "He's awake," someone says.

  The bag is pulled away. Light strikes my sensitive eyes, and for a full second I don't recognize Bergamasc leaning over me.

  "Hello, Jasper. Are you feeling okay?"

  "Where am I?"

  "You tell me. What's the last thing you remember?"

  "Climbing in the Kimberleys." I struggle to focus. "Before the war."

  "Really?" Bergamasc glances at someone out of my sight. "You don't remember what we were talking about last night?"

  "No. What day was that?"

  He looks unsatisfied by my responses, but not resigned. "We gassed you, Jasper, so you'd sleep through the transition. If you hadn't noticed it passing, I thought we might find you out." He shrugs. "No matter. That's not the only card in the deck."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "No. I suppose not. It's not as if we've done this with your consent." Bergamasc smiles a fleeting challenge. "We've been studying you, while you've been our guest. You undergo a pronounced mood swing once a day, without any measurable physiological change. You display a kind of selective amnesia too, although that's not a consistent symptom. We've analyzed the transition from every possible angle in an attempt to figure it out. We've even moved you without you knowing, to see if that would change the timing of it. It didn't. We're as much in the dark as we were before. But we didn't waste our time completely. There was one small thing we noticed."

  He pauses, waiting for me to ask. I don't give him the satisfaction.

  "The transition is seasonal, or appears to be. That is, the period grows longer and shorter depending on the time of year. The difference is subtle but real. That tells me the transition is triggered by an event external to your head, an event tied to a particular place. The variation gives us a rough latitude—somewhere near the thirty-third parallel, as it happens. All we have to do is pick a time of day, and that will give us the longitude. I've reasoned that the event your transition is linked to isn't likely to be the rising of a particular star or planet; neither is it likely to be the phases of the moon.

  "My guess is that it's either dawn or sunset. What do you think, Jasper? Can you shed some light on the subject? Pardon the pun, naturally."

  I can tell by his tone that he already knows the answer to the question. "Spare me the charade, Bergamasc. You're wasting your energy."

  "I don't think so. We're still trying to figure you out. You might be suffering from a multiple personality disorder with delusions of grandeur on the side. In other words, this could be a fantasy you've concocted in order to make yourself feel special. Or is there really something to the transition, something we should look at more closely? This is the scientific method, Jasper. I'm testing you the only way I'm able."

  I want to tell him that God cannot be tested, but of course that isn't true. The true God arises out of humanity, and humanity in turn arises out of the universe and all its laws. Emergent properties abound, and while they may not always be predictable, they are definitely examinable by science.

  So I say nothing.

  His expression doesn't change. "Open the doors, Al."

  A crack opens in the wall to my right, letting in a powerful, whipping wind. My eyes, only recently adjusted to the interior light, are blinded once again by the sun. I hold up a hand to blot out the glare while I struggle to focus. I dimly discern the blue of sky and the green of vegetation. That we are in an airship is immediately clear, hovering a hundred meters or so above the ground. I make out hills, a valley, the slow meander of a river.

  In direct view below us, a forty-meter-high stone tower rises out of the sycamore, oak and pine, with a cast-iron giant on its summit, proudly holding an arrow up to the stars.

  "Very quaint," says Bergamasc. "I've been watching the area for a week. There's nothing here but this old thing, and no funny business going on inside it. But every time the sun hits the tip of that arrow, you change, no matter where you are. What's going on, Jasper? What's so important about this place?"

  My heart feels ready to break as I stare down at Vulcan. He is looking directly at me, calmly confident. "This is where I was born," I say.

  "What does that have to do with your transition? Why the mood swings and amnesia? Why here?"

  "Why not here? It's important that God remains tied to the cycles of the Earth, to the womb of humanity. It is humbling. You call yourself a Prime, but I see in you the consequences of forgetting our origins."

  "And I see in you the consequences of passive self-righteousness. How far would this God of yours have spread if you never left the planet?"

  "God isn't a plague that propagates across the stars—although you might think of it that way. God simply is, acknowledged or not."

  "We're all part of God," Bergamasc repeats, "so we're all doing God's will. Well, in a moment, I'm going to ask Al here to take out a rifle and melt that statue where it stands."

  I straighten in alarm. "Why would you do that?"

  "To see if it changes the timing or frequency of your transitions. It would be far easier for me if our conversations weren't constantly interrupted and I didn't have to explain what we were up to every time we talked."

  "But it's a relic of the Old-Times, priceless—"

  "What does that matter? We're making new and grander history on a million worlds, far from here. That's where you'll find God, I suspect, not in some rusty artifact on a forgotten world."

  "God is everywhere, from the very large to the very small. You can't possibly know how it all fits together."

  "And you do? Or are you just kidding yourself?"

  "I must have known, or how would I have resisted you for so long?"

  "That's what I want to find out. Was it luck or because some secret Fort helped you?"

  "Why can't the answer be God?"

  "Because I don't believe." He is angry now, angry in a way I've never seen before. "God is either a crutch for the weak or a tool for the strong. It's nothing else. Whatever's going on with you, there has to be another explanation. If you looked as long and hard at yourself as I have, you'd know what it was. Or perhaps you do know, and you simply won't tell me."

  A fleeting fear, that I might be thrown bodily from the aircraft, tossed out like garbage, races through me.

  "Something happened here," growls Bergamasc. "Something important, just before the Forts died, something involving all the frags. An experiment, perhaps, and whatever killed the Forts also stopped that experiment in its tracks. I think that you're the result of that experiment—incomplete and self-deluded, but here all the same. At least partly finished."

  "God isn't made in a test-tube."

  "No. Exactly. So what are you, Jasper? What are you?"

  I cannot give him an answer that he hasn't already dismissed.

  We land and I am imprisoned behind the bars of a cell they have constructed in Vulcan's sandstone plinth. I don't know if Bergamasc ever made good on his promise to destroy the statue, but my daily ritual continues unchecked.

  Outside I hear the sound of trees being felled to make way for Bergamasc's camp. I do not mourn them as I mourn the frags who have died in my service, but I do feel a pang of regret with each mighty, slow-motion collapse. If my enemy truly does fell whole worlds as easily as he levels this ancient forest, am I only delaying the axe-blow by standing in his path?

  I know how the war progresses and that at some point I am captured; but how that capture comes about is still unknown to me. What if it's true that I have been betrayed without knowing it? Bergamasc may be mistaken and misguided, but I have rarely known him to lie.

  If I had executed him while he was in my hands, as Alice-Angele
s suggested, I might have spared myself this dilemma. A general of lesser charisma and inferior brilliance could actually have been easier to deal with, in the long run. Helwise's instincts would have been to crush our resistance at any cost to the Earth itself, and that would have resulted in outright war with the Round. The galaxy would never have stood for that. Instead I am entangled in this complex game whose rules change as quickly as they come into focus.

  Because I didn't kill him...

  We had little to say to each other in Lop Nur, and not just because I had the safety of Alice-Angeles and the others on my mind. I decided while on the journey to Malan that I would leave Bergamasc there with the nuke that I had promised to abandon. His own jamming would prevent him calling for help, and thus alerting his underlings that we could be safely targeted. That head start, I hoped, would give us the edge we needed to get to safety.

  We did talk some, though, in Malan, sheltered for the night in a self-repairing nuclear waste complex, circa the twenty-second century, when he commented on our out-of-date provisions.

  I responded that humanity has existed in an anachronistic state ever since it invented history. For almost a million years, the layers of knowledge we have created have been pressing against each other like geological strata. Faults and folds create strange juxtapositions and resonances between facts that are otherwise entirely unconnected, giving present society a richness unimaginable in earlier times.

  He agreed, noting his own use of anachronistic terms and tactics, and technology too. "Whatever works. The ends justify the means."

  "What if your ends are the wrong ends? What if anachronism isn't enough?"

  "For what?"

  "For the attainment of humanity's grandest desire: to become as gods."

  He frowned, an expression with which I am now very familiar. "You think we should be more anachronistic?"

  "More than anachronistic," I said. "That's just the first step."

  Before I could explain more, Alice-Angeles interrupted to tell me that the Apparatus had found a landline into the complex. The gestalt possessed data I needed to see immediately.