by Adam Roberts
‘No!’ yelped Billiard-Fanon. ‘Not him – me! I am the one elevated by your grace, even in the deepest of depths, in order to …’
‘I have no interest in you,’ said the Jewel. Its voice had a weird flatness of pronunciation, although it spoke French fluently enough. There was a distant, chime-like underlay to the sound. ‘Amanpreet Jhutti, you are expert in the engineering of nuclear power?’
‘Yes?’ Jhutti replied, his heart suddenly running-on-the-spot inside his chest. ‘What? What do you want?’
‘Instruct me in the ways of nuclear fission,’ said the Jewel.
The profound oddness of the moment kept sliding out of Jhutti’s mind. As if it were a reasonable thing! – to have sunk to the bottom of the deepest ocean in the world in company of a madman only to be quizzed on his knowledge of nuclear physics by a giant geometrical shape. He said, ‘You do not understand the principles of an atomic pile?’
‘I do,’ said the Jewel. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
Looking more closely, Jhutti could see that the bullet Billiard Fanon had fired was lodged inside the body of the structure. A line composed of dots – miniature bubbles – showed the trajectory it had taken before coming to a halt. Jhutti realised that though it looked crystalline – the word ‘tetragrammaton’ came into Jhutti’s head, from whence he knew not – it was actually composed of some strange jelly-like substance. As to how it had suddenly manifested … Jhutti couldn’t even guess. He almost reached out to touch it; but held himself back.
‘Why ask me, if you already know the answer,’ Jhutti said.
‘It should, I think, be obvious why I am asking you,’ replied the Jewel, with a note of asperity in his voice.
‘God, God, God, God,’ cried Billiard-Fanon again. ‘Do not talk to him! He is a heathen. I am the chosen one!’
‘Be quiet,’ the Jewel instructed him.
‘Restore gravity to this place, O God,’ Billiard-Fanon pleaded, ‘that we may kneel before you! That we may abase ourselves!’
‘I am not here for you,’ the shape said again, crossly. ‘I am here for Amanpreet Jhutti, expert in the engineering of nuclear power.’
‘But why?’ Jhutti asked.
Billiard-Fanon howled, like a dog. ‘My God-God-God-God,’ he yelled. ‘Why have you forsaken me? Or are you a devil? But that cannot be the case!’ Jhutti could see him aiming his pistol once again, pointing it at the shape. ‘I am the Holy One, and the truth is clear to me – the truth of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. God must die, and I must kill him! God must die to be reborn again … as me!’
Billiard-Fanon discharged the pistol five times in quick succession. The noise was appalling, deafening, and Jhutti put his hands over his ears. Each of the bullets entered the body of the tetragrammaton, slowed and stopped.
The shape seemed to grow, to swell, and then – with a clonic jerk – it contracted. The six bullets were squeezed from its body like pips from an orange. All six converged back on their point of origin. Billiard-Fanon did not even have time to cry out. The impacts caused all four of his limbs to fly outwards, and sent his body karooming straight back to collide with the wall behind him.
‘No!’ shouted Jhutti.
‘Be quick!’ the tetragrammaton demanded. ‘At this – distance – it is very hard for me – to maintain co – herence. Answer my question!’
‘Are you God?’ Jhutti gasped.
‘No,’ the answer rang out.
‘Did you bring this submarine here so as,’ Jhutti asked, stopping halfway through the question because it seemed too absurd. Shortly he finished: `… so as to speak to me?’
‘Yes,’ said the tetragrammaton. ‘To ask you two questions! And you must answer them!’
‘Very well,’ said Jhutti, trembling a little. He looked past the shape at Billiard-Fanon’s lifeless corpse.
‘Do you understand the principle of nuclear fission?’
‘After seven years of post-doctoral research, I should hope I do.’
‘Do you understand the principle of nuclear fusion?’
‘Fission? Yes, yes I do.’
‘No! Do you understand the principle of nuclear fusion?’
‘Ah, pardon me, I misheard. Fusion? I understand the principles, I suppose. It is what happens in the heart of the sun. But as for making it happen on earth, inside a manmade reactor? We are a long way away from that, I’m afraid.’
And with that answer, the tetragrammaton vanished, de-appearing with a gust of air and a slight squelching noise. Jhutti was alone.
‘Good gracious,’ he said, pushing himself off to float over towards Billiard-Fanon’s body and check for a pulse. ‘Am I truly the last one alive? What to do now?’
31
THE JEWEL
To be weightless in air. To be weightless in water.
Lebret couldn’t see anything. He wasn’t breathing air into his lungs, and that fact disturbed him – felt wrong, awkward. He wasn’t hot. He felt cold, he supposed; which is to say, he must feel cold, since he didn’t feel hot. But actually, he didn’t feel anything. He could not move his arms or legs.
He was not alone. He could not tell who was with him. He was dead. Was this how it was, being dead? He could not move the muscles that operated his eyelids; but he did not need to – his eyes were open. But he could not move the tiny ring of muscle inside his eye to bring the half-lit blurry mess of grey-green into focus. Was he dead? He considered this. It seemed to him an important question. Indeed, now that he came to think of it he wasn’t sure it was possible to ask a more important one. He framed it in his mind. It was always there. It was the ocean bed underlying all our watery consciousness. He asked, ‘Am I dead?’
‘Just so,’ said his companion.
Lebret did not move his lips or tongue; and he expelled no air with his diaphragm – indeed, he had no air to expel. Nonetheless he asked, ‘Who are you?’
‘I am the Jewel.’
This did not help. Lebret tried a different question, ‘Where are you?’
‘Here.’ As soon as this word appeared in Lebret’s sluggish brain, he could see – directly in front of his eyes. A crystalline tetrahedron. It rotated slowly, glinting greenly in the dimness.
‘You are an emerald!’ Lebret cried. But then he looked again, and it seemed to him that the shade was more blue than green. ‘Or a sapphire?’ And as he said this, it seemed to him that the gemstone darkened, became more richly green until it spilled into a deep, rich blue.
The faceted shape swung round, and Lebret caught a glimpse of himself in one of its triangular facets. His face was swollen and deformed, eyes glassy. But his eyes were evidently still operational, or how else could he see himself? Twice killed, and twice resurrected, he thought. Shot in the head; poisoned with sepsis; still alive. The strands of Dakkar’s beard were fixed to his chin, and were swaying in the slight current.
‘I thought them dead,’ Lebret said. ‘Those – whatever they are. Eels. Worms.’
‘Water revived them. They were never truly alive, to die.’
‘And you are connected to me – through them?’
‘Yes,’ said the Jewel, simply.
‘So for that purpose – you must forgive me for reverting to this question, but it concerns me. For that purpose, does it not matter that I am – dead?’
‘I have had some time to work with folk, such as you are. Yours is a strange substrate for consciousness – or so it seems to me. A soft and spongy brain, yet it retains all its neuronal connections, even after death. It is a simple matter to make it work.’
‘Simple for you,’ thought Lebret, bitterly.
‘Yes,’ agreed the Jewel.
‘The substrate of your consciousness, then, is crystalline?’
‘As you can see.’
‘But, clearly, you are not physically present. Dakkar said that you were a trillion kilometres away.’
‘Indeed. But I am bringing the shell to me. And you with it.’
‘A trillion miles!’ said Lebret. ‘That will take … hundreds of years!’
‘It will indeed take some time, although not so long as that. But there is plenty of time.’
‘Dakkar told me not to trust you,’ said Lebret. ‘He said you intended to conquer my world.’
‘I do,’ agreed the Jewel, readily. ‘When I have you, and your companion, here with me, then I shall move ahead with that project.’
‘I shall not assist you!’ Lebret declared fiercely. ‘I shall resist.’
‘I have learnt a good deal from the unexpected resistance of Dakkar,’ the Jewel said. ‘I shall apply what I have learned. I do not believe you will be able to resist.’
‘But why?’ cried Lebret. ‘What good will it do you?’
‘I have studied your cosmos, as best I can,’ said the Jewel. ‘It is a passing strange place. But each of the four universes is different from the other three, and each must seem strange to the inhabitants of the others, I suppose.’
‘Four universes?’
‘The tetraverse,’ confirmed the Jewel. ‘Did you think your vacuuverse the only cosmos? How could you believe such a bizarrely improbable thing?’
‘It is the nature of consciousness to think itself unique, I suppose,’ Lebret mused, mentally. Not a one of his muscles moved. He was neither hot nor cold. ‘And therefore to gift its surroundings with uniqueness too. I thought my world the only one. Or I did, until we stumbled into this … strange place. A waterverse! I could not believe an infinite space filled with water could exist. Is this cosmos infinite?’
‘Geometrically, yes indeed; just as yours is. But it is of finite mass, as yours is. Indeed, all four iterations of the tetraverse manifest balance in terms of total mass.’
‘What do you mean?’
The Jewel began to rotate more rapidly, spinning smoothly. Lebret saw his own drowned face flashing in each of the triangular facets in turn.
‘I have studied the other three universes, as far as I have been able,’ said the Jewel. ‘Of course I have! Of course I have. Your universe is – I speak very approximately – a sphere with a radius of 1030 light years. Naturally, yours is a vacuum cosmos. Matter is spread in varying degrees of irregularity throughout it, but overall the constituent atoms are spread extraordinarily tenuously. When you look at the total picture – on average, the density of your cosmos is one hydrogen atom in every four cubic metres of volume. That is a medium whose density is about 10^30 times less than water. And the result of this strange harmonious coincidence of numbers – which, of course, is no coincidence at all, but rather an expression of underlying geometric truths about the constraints on any existing universe – the result of this congruence is that the waterverse must be one times ten-to-the-one-thirtieth the size of the vacuuverse.’
‘In other words,’ said Lebret, working the sum in his head, ‘it must be … only one light-year across—’
‘One light year radius. Two light years across. Approximately twenty trillion kilometres. If you wish a comparison, to help visualise the size – twenty trillion kilometres is the size of your own solar system.’
Lebret thought about this. ‘I would have guessed that the orbit of Pluto would be considerably less than …’
‘Pluto? Nonsense! What is Pluto? Pluto is neither here nor there.’ The Jewel was spinning more rapidly now, as if winding itself up with its own discourse. ‘No, from the sun in the centre out to the edge of your sun’s heliopause. The Oort cloud. You know the Oort cloud?’
‘No,’ conceded Lebret.
‘Comets. Billions of comets. They fill a vast sphere, around your central matter-knot sun. Mostly they stay there, the comets, although occasionally they fall in and hurtle near the inner planets, trailing great fishy tails of steam behind them. But if you measure your system from its matter-knot centre out to its heliopause, it has a radius of about a light year. It is almost all vacuo, of course; but let us describe it as a single unity. Well, the waterverse is a similar size.’
‘Though filled throughout by water,’ Lebret said.
‘Indeed.’
‘But how does it not collapse upon itself?’ Lebret pressed. ‘I don’t understand. Why does not gravity compress the water, over time?’
‘A good question. Indeed, it is already starting to happen. But my waterverse has existed for only one-10^30th as long as your vacuuverse. A long time, measured by the days and years you use to measure the passing of time; but not long enough for the inexorable forces of gravity to create first whirlpools and tourbillions, and eventually gravitational densities strong enough to rip hydrogen and oxygen apart. That is in the future – the far future.’
‘Are you seeking to escape? Is that what you are looking for, in my world?’
‘That you ask such a question shows that you do not understand the larger structure,’ rebuked the Jewel.
‘You mean, the … tetraverse?’
‘Your ghostly vacuuverse, vast and tenuous. My waterverse. And the rest? There is also a cosmos consisting entire of matter.’
‘A matterverse! Is it inhabited?’
‘It is. Although its inhabitants are utterly other to what you would consider a life form.’
‘Gas, liquid, solid. What, then, is the fourth? Surely those three exhaust the different ways in which atoms may be arranged?’
‘The fourth is immensely smaller, by a large margin the smallest of all – an almost incomprehensibly dense cosmos. It is comprised of matter in a state of fusion-plasma.’
‘Fire,’ said Lebret, nodding slowly, and causing his hair to waft in the water. ‘Universes of air, of water, of solid matter and – of fire!’
‘Poetic, but imprecise.’
‘So – you do not wish to conquer us? To rule our vacuum cosmos?’
‘What is there in it to rule? To be king of nothingness? That is no ambition.’
‘You wish to pass through our universe!’ Lebret guessed. ‘Your true aim is to reach the universe of rock – or perhaps the realm of fire!’
‘Still you do not understand. The relationship between the four universes is a function of infinite geometries,’ said the Jewel. ‘Perhaps you are picturing these different cosmoses as strung out, like pearls on a thread – a very large sphere for the vacuuverse, much smaller ones for the waterverse, the matterverse and a miniature one for the fusionverse. If so, you are picturing them wrongly. Quite wrongly! When one infinite geometrical figure intersects another, they intersect at all points simultaneously. Or, to put it another way, if you put infinite geometrical figure A inside infinite geometrical figure B, you are at the same time placing infinite geometrical figure B inside infinite geometrical figure A. You cannot help but do this. Think of the tetraverse …’
‘Hard to do!’
‘Then you must exercise your intellect. As far as I have been able to determine, these four nesting universes are the sum total of absolute reality. But you interrupted me! Think of the tetraverse as four boxes, each inside each: the vacuuverse containing the waterverse containing the matterverse containing the fusionverse …’
‘Russian dolls,’ gasped Lebret. ‘Well, that is not a bad way of conceptualising it. So long as you also understand that the order is reversed – the vacuuverse is simultaneously inside the waterverse, which is inside the matterverse, which is inside the fusionverse. And actually, we must factorial four to arrive at the full description of these hierarchies.’
‘But why should there be four universes? Why not three – or five? Or a million?’
‘Or an infinite number – yes, quite, quite. It is a good question. Perhaps because matter can only occur in four forms – gaseous, liquid, solid and atomically fused? We might as well ask why are there only four dimensions, length, breadth, height and time. Why not three, or five? Or an infinite number?’
The blue-green Jewel was spinning rapidly now, stirring the water and making Lebret’s lifeless body wobble. The edges were blurring. ‘You did not answer my question,’ Lebret said. ‘W
hat is the nature of your designs upon my cosmos?’
‘The balance of the tetraverse is a precarious thing. It is not a permanent structure. It is surrounded by a shell of pure fusion fire – and that fire is also what is contained within the structure, at the centre, and at every level – a flame that threatens to consume everything. The presence of your vacuuverse insulates the other realms from this destructive potential – because it is not only the outermost layer of the tetraverse, but also the hollow core of ultimate reality, and the intervening layer between all other cosmoses.’
‘Like a thermos keeping heat and cold apart. Why should it have a special role?’
‘Infinite geometries are complex. But the relative immensity of your cosmos is a relevant detail.’
‘And?’
‘And your planet, the world upon which you and your fellows live – though an infinitesimal speck within the larger whole – nevertheless, your world threatens the entire tetraverse. It is the weak link in the larger structure.’
‘How?’
‘It is a nexus, a world of land and oceans, blanketed with air and curled around a sphere of fiery magma. But populated – swarming with living beings.’
‘My people.’
‘You are ingenious, your kind. You do not understand the danger.’
‘Of what?’
‘If you are left to your own devices you will develop fusion energy. Already – as your iron-metal craft shows – you have developed simple nuclear power. But if you create fusion, not in the interior of vacuum moated stars, but upon your four-elemental world – in structures built upon land, beside the sea, open to the air – if you do this, then you will break the seal. You will breach the barrier that keeps the terrible power of the fusionverse, and give it and its inhabitants access to the other three universes. You are concerned as to what will happen if I invade your world – you should be more concerned as to what will happen if the fusionverse ever gains access to your cosmos. And through it, to mine.’
