But it was finished at last, a holistic library of galactic history and a fortress against the evaporation of matter. Noospheres ringed the Archive in a joyous orbital dance. Perhaps, beyond the still-inviolable boundaries of the singularities, new universes were being born from the ashes of the old. That possibility was being investigated; faint signals flashed between this and other Archives, proposals for universe-building that daunted all of Sentience Itself. Perhaps one day…
But that was speculation. For now, galactic sentience reveled in what it had created.
Monofilaments of Higgs distortion swept the Archive, spooling history in sequential order. Sentient nodes and subnodes delighted in exploring the past — one, two, three times, as the Archive was read and reread. Knowledge became involute, knew itself; sophants among the noospheres debated the difference between the Knowing and the Known.
Tragedy struck without warning and without explanation some 103 years after the structure was finished.
The Archive, the noospheres discovered, had been quietly infiltrated and corrupted. Semisentient entities — self-propagating, evolving parasite codes hidden in the network of Higgs signals that passed between galaxies — had commandeered the Archive’s structural protocols. Information was being lost, irretrievably, moment by moment.
Worse, information was being changed.
The Archive evolved in to a new and distorted form. Subsentient virtual entities, relics of a war that had devastated a distant galaxy long before the beginning of this galaxy’s Eclectic Age, were using the Archive as a platform to preserve their algorithms against thermal death. They lacked moral regard for any entity not themselves, but they were fully aware of the purpose of the Archive and of its designers. They had not simply captured the structure, they had taken it hostage.
Static memories embedded in the Archive as records became, in effect, new seed-sentiences: new lives, trapped in an epistructure they could never perceive and manipulated by entities beyond their conception. These new lives, though products of the Archive’s corruption, could not be terminated or erased. That would stain the conscience of Sentience beyond redemption. In theory, the Archive could be emptied, cleansed, and rewritten… but that would be equivalent to murder on a collosal scale.
Moreover, these lives must be saved, must be remembered. It was the goal Sentience had pursued since its inception, to redeem itself from death. The new and strange quasi history evolving inside the Archive could not simply be abandoned.
Noospheres retreated from the Archive, fearful of contagion; Sentience conferred with itself, and a thousand years passed.
The Archive must be repaired, it was decided. The invaders must be expelled. The new seed-sentiences would ultimately be lost, along with the Archive itself, if nothing was done. The viral invaders would not be satisfied until the cooling universe contained nothing but their own relentless codes. It was a task no less difficult than building the Archive, and far more problematic — because the cleansing would have to begin within the Archive itself. Individual sentient nodes by the billions would have to enter the Archive both physically and virtually. And they would meet a cunning opposition.
Individuals — in effect, ghosts — who had long since merged their identities into the noospheres were stripped of their eons of augmentation, rendered nearly mortal for their penetration into the corrupted Archive.
One of those billions was an ancient terrestrial node which had once been named Guilford Law. This seed-consciousness, barely complex enough to retain its own ancient memory, was launched with countless others into the Archive’s fractal depths.
History’s last war had begun.
Guilford Law remembered war. It was war that had killed him, after all.
Book Two
Winter, Spring 1920–1921
“Esse est percipii.”
— Bishop Berkeley
Chapter Fifteen
From the Journal of Guilford Law:
I mean to recount these events while I still can.
It is a miracle I am still alive, and it will be another miracle if any of us survive the winter. We have found shelter in this unspeakably strange place — of which more later — but food is scarce, the climate frigid, and there is the ever-present possibility of another attack.
Today I am still weak (I hold a pencil the way Lily does, and my writing looks like hers), and the daylight is already fading.
I hope someday Lily will read these words even if I can’t deliver them to her myself. I think of you, Caroline, and of Lily, so often and so vividly that I can almost touch you. Though less easily now that the fever has diminished.
Of all my feverish phantasms, you are the only ones I will miss.
More tomorrow, if circumstances allow.
Three months have passed since the Partisans attacked our expedition. During much of that time I was unconscious or raving. What follows is my reconstruction of events. Avery Keck, John Sullivan, and “Diggs” Digby have filled in the gaps for me, with contributions from the other survivors.
I have to be succinct, due to limitations of strength and time. (Light comes fitfully through these high stone embrasures, filtered by oilcloth or animal skins, and I have to make a contribution to our survival even if it’s a modest one — mainly helping Diggs, who has lost the use of his left arm, to cook our meager suppers. He’ll need me soon. Diggs is stoking the fire now and Wilson Farr has gone for a bucket of snow.)
After we left the Bodensee, and as we approached the Alps, we were attacked by a band of armed Partisans whose only apparent motive was to murder us and plunder our supplies. We lost Ed Betts, Chuck Hemphill, and Emil Swensen in the first volleys — would have lost more if we had camped closer to the tree line. Tom Compton’s quick thinking saved us. He led us around one of the region’s huge insect middens, a trap into which the pursuing Partisans stumbled and were consumed. Those who did not die in the nest fled or were shot.
They weren’t the only victims. One of the insects managed to inject its poison into my bloodstream. By nightfall I was at death’s door, according to Dr. Farr. I was not expected to survive, and most of the rest of the expeditionaries suffered numerous major or minor wounds. Preston Finch survived with only a twisted ankle, but his spirit was crushed; he spoke in monosyllables and abandoned the leadership role to Sullivan and Tom Compton.
When the survivors had rallied sufficiently to limp back to the ruined encampment they found the scientific equipment and samples burned, the animals slaughtered, rations and medical supplies stolen.
It pains me to think of it even now. All our work, Caroline! All Sullivan’s voucher samples, his notes, his plant press, lost. Both of my cameras were destroyed and the exposed plates shattered. (Sullivan broke the news when I eventually regained consciousness.) My notebook survived only because I kept it on my person at all times. We did manage to salvage a few other notes, plus writing implements and enough scraps of paper that many of the surviving expeditionaries are keeping their own winter diaries.
I couldn’t mourn the dead, Caroline, any more than I could open my eyes or do more than draw breath while the poison burned through my body.
I mourned them later.
The wounded needed rest and food. Once again, Tom Compton was our salvation. He cauterized my insect bite and treated it with the sap of a bitter weed. Dr. Farr accepted this wilderness midwifery because there was no civilized medicine left to us. Farr used his own medical skill to bind wounds and set broken bones. From the remnants of our supplies we fashioned a more defensible and less obvious camp, in case more Partisans were lurking. Few of us were well enough to travel.
The logical next step was to seek help. Lake Constance was only a few days behind us. Erasmus would have gone back to his hut and his kraal by now, but the boats were waiting — unless they too had been discovered by hostile forces — and the journey down the Rhine would be less difficult than the journey up. Figure a month to reach Jeffersonville, less than that for a rescue par
ty to return.
Tom Compton volunteered to go, but he was needed to help shelter and treat survivors. His hunting and trapping experience meant he could forage for food even without ammunition for the rifle he carried. In fact he took to hunting fur snakes with a Bowie knife. The animals eventually learned to shy at the smell of him, but they remained so docile that he could slit a snake’s throat before the dumb beast realized it was in danger.
We dispatched Chris Tuckman and Ray Burke, unhurt in the attack, to seek help. They took what remained of our tinned food (a pittance) and a tent that hadn’t burned, plus pistols, a compass, and a generous portion of our hoarded ammunition.
Three months have passed.
They haven’t come back.
No one has come. Of the original fifteen, nine of us remain. Myself, plus Finch, Sullivan, Compton, Donner, Robertson, Farr, and Digby.
Winter came early this year. Icy sleet, and then a granular, relentless snow.
Sullivan, Wilson Farr, and Tom Compton nursed me back to a semblance of health — fed me vegetable gruel and carried me, when we were forced to travel, on a travois rigged behind a wild snake. For obvious reasons, I lost weight — more, even, than the rest of us, and we’re a hungry crowd these days.
Caroline, you should see me. That “little belly” you complained of is only a memory. I’ve had to make new notches in my belt. My ribs are as plain as the tines of a pitchfork, and when I shave (we have a mirror, a razor) my Adam’s apple bobs like a cat under a bedsheet.
As I said, we found shelter for the winter. But the shelter we found—
Caroline, I cannot begin to describe it! Not tonight, at any rate.
(Listen: Diggs at his work again, his forked-branch crutch knocking the stone floor, water hissing as the kettle goes over the fire — he’ll be needing me soon.)
Perhaps if I describe it as I first saw it… through a fever haze, of course, but I was not delirious, although it might sound that way.
Caroline, be patient. I fear your incredulity.
Picture us, a ragged band of men in animal furs, some walking, some limping, some dragged on harnesses, starved and freezing as we cross another snowy ridge and peer down into yet another wilderness valley… Diggs with his ruined arm, Sullivan limping pitifully, me on a sledge because I still could not walk any significant distance. According to Farr I was suffering the effect of the insect venom on my liver. I was feverish and yellow and — well, I won’t go into detail.
Another alpine valley, but this one was different. Tom Compton had scouted it out.
It was a broad river valley, cut from stony soil and populated with dour, spiky mosque trees. From my place on the sledge, wrapped in furs, that was all I saw at first: the slope of the valley and its dark vegetation. But the rest of the party fell quickly silent, and I raised myself up to see what had alarmed them, and it was the single thing I had least expected to see in this desolate land.
A city!
Or the ruin of a city. It was a vast mosaic through which a river had run riot, visibly aged but obviously the work of intelligent builders. Even at this distance it was apparent the architects were long gone. Nothing walked this city’s relentlessly parallel streets. The buildings still intact were iron-gray boxes hewn from stone, softened by mist and time. And the city was large, Caroline, large beyond believing — a ruin that could have contained all of Boston and a couple of counties more.
For all its apparent age, the city’s outlying structures were more or less complete and handily available. This ruin promised everything we had despaired of finding: shelter for ourselves and our animals, a supply of fresh water, and (given the wooded hills and evidence of nearby snake herds) plentiful game. Tom Compton had scouted the city and environs and thought we could winter here. He warned us that the city was an uninhabited ruin, that we would have to work hard to keep ourselves warm in its drafty warrens, even with plentiful firewood. But since we had pictured ourselves dying in our snakeskin tents — or simply frozen to death in some Alpine pass — even this grim prospect seemed the gift of a benevolent God.
Of course the city raised countless questions. How had it come to exist, in a land void of human habitation, and what had happened to its builders? Were its builders even human, or some novel Darwinian race? But we were too exhausted to debate the ruin’s provenance or meaning. Only Preston Finch hesitated before descending the slope of the valley, and I don’t know what he feared; he hadn’t spoken aloud for day’s.
The prospect of shelter buoyed our spirits. We collected mosque and sage-pine windfall along the way, and before the stars began to shine in the wintry sky we had a fire roaring, casting fitful light among the colossal stones of the Nameless City.
Dear Caroline: I have not been as faithful in keeping this journal as I would have liked. Events are pressing.
There hasn’t been any new disaster — don’t worry — only the ongoing disaster of our isolation and the demands of the primitive life.
We live like Red Indians, in order to live at all. My fever has passed (for good, I hope) and my poisoned leg has regained its sensation and even some strength. I can walk a fair distance with only a stick for support and I have begun to accompany Tom Compton and Avery Keck on their hunting expeditions, though I’m still confined to the broad sweep of the valley. By spring I should have no trouble keeping up with the expedition when we finally make for Lake Constance and home.
For hunting we bundle ourselves in furs and hide boots. Our clothes are stitched with bone needles, the rags of our civilized clothing salvaged for thread. We have two rifles and even some ammunition, but most of our hunting is by bow or knife. Tom made the bows and shafts from local wood and bone, and he is still our only marksman. A rifle shot, he points out, could attract unwelcome attention, and the bullets might be needed on the journey home. I doubt the Partisans are anywhere nearby. Winter must hinder them as much as it hinders us. But several of us have experienced the sense of being watched from time to time.
We have captured a few fur snakes and corralled them in a ruined foundation with a half-roof for shelter. Sullivan looks after them and makes sure they have enough forage and water. He has switched from botany to animal husbandry, at least for the duration.
I’ve grown closer to Sullivan, perhaps because our parallel injuries (my leg, his hip) kept us confined together for some weeks. Often we’re left alone with Diggs or Preston Finch. Finch remains nearly wordless, though he helps with the physical labor. Sullivan, by contrast, talks to me freely, and I almost as freely to him. You might be wary of his atheism, Caroline, but it’s a principled atheism, if that makes any sense.
Last night we were assigned the late watch, a plush duty if you don’t mind the hours. We kept the fire burning and swapped stories, as usual, until we heard a commotion from the stables, as we call the semi-collapsed structure where the animals are kept. So we donned our furs and limped into the frigid night to investigate.
Snow had been falling all afternoon, and Sullivan’s torch cast a flickering glow across a boulevard of unsullied white. With its broken stones and fractured walls cloaked in snow the City seems only temporarily vacated. The buildings are identical, though in various stages of decay, and identically made, of huge bricks cut from raw granite and set in place without benefit of mortar. The bricks or blocks are perfectly square, about ten feet on a side. The buildings themselves are identically square and arranged in squares of four, as if by a meticulous but unimaginative child.
The doorways may once have possessed wooden doors, but if they ever existed they have long since rotted and weathered away. The openings are about twice as high as a man’s head and several times wider than his girth, but this, Sullivan points out, tells us virtually nothing of the original inhabitants — the doors of cathedrals are larger than the doors of sod huts, but the men who pass through them are the same. Nevertheless, the impression lingers of some squat, gigantic race, antediluvian, pre-Adamic.
We had put up a crude mosque
wood fence to keep our twelve captive snakes corralled in their ruin. Usually they’re fairly quiet, barring the usual belching and mewling. Tonight the noise was nearly continuous, a collective moan, and we tracked it under the half-fallen stone eaves, where one of our herd was giving birth.
Or rather (we saw as we came closer) it was laying eggs. The eggs emerged from the beast’s pendulous abdomen in glittering clusters, each egg about the size of a softball, until a gelatinous mass of them lay steaming in a mound of windblown snow.
I looked at Sullivan. “The eggs will freeze in this weather. If we build a fire—”
Sullivan shook his head. “Nature must have made a provision,” he whispered. “If not, we’re too ignorant to help. Stand back, Guilford. Give them room.”
And he was right. Nature had made a provision, if an awkward one. When the female finished dropping her eggs a second animal, perhaps the male parent, approached the pearlescent mass and in a singular motion of its six limbs managed to scoop the eggs from the snow into pouches arrayed along its belly… there, presumably, to incubate until the hatchlings could survive on their own.
The moaning and barking finally relented, and the herd went back about its business.
We fled to the warmth of our own shelter. We had taken over two immense rooms in one of the less exposed buildings, partitioned and sealed them from the weather with snakeskins and made an insulating floor of dried rushes. The effect was cheerful, if only by comparison with the frigid outer dark.
Sullivan grew thoughtful, warming his hands, putting a kettle of snow at the edge of the fire for root tea. “They’re born,” he said, “they reproduce, they die… Guilford, if they didn’t evolve, it’s inevitable that they will evolve — selected by nature, bred by circumstance…”
Darwinia Page 12
