To Climb a Flat Mountain

by G. David Nordley

  “When we left the Solar System,” Collette said, “most philosophers ascribed the lack of contact with other civilizations to a very strong quarantine, an ethic much like that of our own environmentalists that forbids interference with nature.”

  Ascendant smiled. “But that can’t go on forever, can it?”

  Jacques nodded. “Eventually, we would start impacting other civilizations. We’ve probably screwed things up here, ecologically, haven’t we? As I’m sure you know, that was not the choice of any of the individuals here.”

  “You have killed sentient beings to keep your individual selves alive. In most of the galaxy, that would be regarded as a very primitive characteristic in a spacefaring race. As people, we are still driven by emotions, needs to dominate, reproduce, preserve ourselves. Most of the Universe has moved beyond that.”

  “So, the caretaker of this world does nothing? Just watches us suffer?”

  “Think of all the life forms that feel, hurt, need, and suffer and all the gradations of awareness. Suffering can’t all be banished, but it can have meaning from what comes later. We were left—allowed—to solve our problems by ourselves.”

  “What changed? Why were you resurrected? Why contact us now?”

  Ascendant giggled. “I’m still human enough to enjoy this. Dear, dear Jacques. We, the human race, solved our problems. We’re out of the cradle and off the rug, so to speak. Just taking baby steps, mind you, but it’s time for humanity to learn the rules.”

  “Humanity?” Doc asked. “Does your, uh, expanded awareness have some news from the Solar System?”

  She nodded. “There’s a lot to talk about. Have you seen the new star in the sky?”

  “Near Antares,” Jacques said. “We have to catch it just before Antares rise, or the glare hides it.”

  “It’s a starship decelerating. The Solar System has found you. They’ll be here in a few months.”

  * * * *

  It was a clear, still, dry evening and exceptionally cool for their altitude. The women of Providence, perhaps sensing that their way of life was to change unalterably again, made the best of things by putting on a feast around the campfire. The shuttles replicated some wine and beer, the first spirits anyone had tasted for six subjective months, or a thousand years of real time.

  So fortified, with Ascendant’s help, they caught up, at least to circa 2800 ce. Earth still maintained a stable constitutional monarchy, but that was for tradition and show; AIs did everything and the only person with a real job was the Empress. The ancient effort to rescue the 36 Ophiuchi colony had been successful, if one could call the thousands of deaths that involved a success. It was the last such effort ever attempted.

  Human-derived colonies still, occasionally, did some horrendous things, but the Universe had better ways of dealing with that. Nanites invaded bodies and changed minds.

  Humans had made a black hole, and now had hundreds of them powering space colonies, performing physics experiments, and generally being useful. The initial effort had drawn the attention of passing spacefarers of an ancient but conservative-by-choice branch of a civilization of flying aliens. Not long after that, a galactic library node had been discovered in Neptune’s moon, Proteus. So, well before the Resolution hit Cube World, humanity had found its way into the galactic community.

  Ascendant concluded by saying that she might very well be a common example of the human-descended beings they would encounter in the Galaxy today, but the variety was wide.

  Gabe said, “I knew we’d be a group of Rip van Winkles, but this ... this will take a whole lot of digesting.”

  Ascendant laughed, as did a number of others, at first timidly, then heartily. What Ascendant was telling them was hard to grasp, but Gabe was clearly finding it harder than most. Jacques added, “And we are still six hundred years behind the times.”

  “Or ahead of them, depending on which way the information is flowing,” Helen noted. “I imagine this story will still make a splash on Earth!”

  “Are we welcome here?” Arroya Montez asked. “Do we have to go back? I have a very simple, stable life here, with Evgenie. My knowledge is all out of date, and I would have no place on Earth now.”

  Ascendant smiled at her. Jacques thought there might have been something like recognition in her expression. But she gave no hint of it as she answered Montez’s question.

  “This world is an experiment in evolution. Six identical environments and with identical seed stock, constructed by beings not too unlike your kangasaur about half a billion years ago, a race not entirely given to theory and abstractions.

  “What, they wondered, if one reran evolution for real; would the Universe produce anything like them again? So they put it to the real test. It’s been running about two hundred fifty million years. The cube shape is a bit of whimsy, or art. But it’s also functional; the biospheres remain isolated and the long slide of basalt down the cube face edges drives the tectonics that recycle this world’s carbon.”

  “Our landing must have upset things,” Doc said.

  “Like the KT impact on Earth?” Soob remarked. “Contingencies, like us, are what drive evolutionary change.”

  Ascendant laughed. “Yes, all grist for the mill. The caretaker takes it in stride.”

  “We aren’t going to get kicked off?” Dominic asked. “We can stay here?”

  “It is a bit unusual. In the quarter billion years Cube World has existed, only 1,728 other intelligent races have stumbled upon it before their incorporation into galactic society. Twenty-three hundred years is the longest any of them have stayed. The resurfacing time is about fifty-seven thousand years. Now, the beings Jacques calls dinotowers have long memories, but there is no other trace of these visitations in any of the biospheres. You’re welcome to stay a while as long as you control your numbers.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Do we want to? My God says I shall have no other gods before ‘im. I’m not sure where alien planet-ruling machines fits into that.”

  “You’d probably find Earthmind quite a shock, then,” Ascendant said. “It’s a virtual universe for people who tire of biology.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Gabe sighed. “Were we wrong? Or ... were we right?”

  Ascendant smiled. “Here, you’ll be left alone as much as you wish, while you figure that out.”

  “Maybe that’s good for now, Gabe,” Maria said.

  “We still have some formalities of justice to consider,” Collette declared.

  “Judge not,” Gabe said softly, “lest ye be judged.”

  Everyone was silent.

  “What does justice mean now?” Soob finally asked. “What purpose is there in punishment? I suppose one wants to do something to ensure that a perpetrator doesn’t act obnoxiously in the future. Even if murder, or should I say attempted murder, is futile here, I would think it would still be quite an inconvenience. The whole point of this galactic ethical structure seems to be that beings, as collective races, I suppose, have a right to seek their own destiny.”

  Ascendant laughed. “Not badly put. While I am very comfortable with who I am now, it is true that I would not have chosen this experience for myself. But as for what you do about Leo, we human beings can be human beings as long as we don’t ... greatly inconvenience ... others.”

  “Or until we decide to be something else?” Helen asked.

  Ascendant nodded. “It seems fairly certain that you will, eventually. But there’s no hurry and there will certainly be no coercion.”

  “I’d always feel someone is watching over my shoulder,” Helen said.

  “A new feeling for an atheist, I’d guess,” Gabe said, reviving a bit.

  “Did Leo kill you, Ascendant?” Doc asked.

  She smiled with a shake of her head. “Not for lack of trying. Leo Suretta, or Leo Syrtis, as he was named at birth on Mars, was the New Reformation’s agent on the Resolution. It was supposed to be a martyrdom mission, for him, murder for the rest of us—or perhaps an act of war. But I w
as up and managed to restore the AI and wake the command team in time to devise and implement the contingency plan. We found this place, so Leo saw an opportunity to create another authoritarian culture.” Ascendant sighed. “He arranged for people he thought would make the kind of society he wanted to be on the shuttles.”

  “The CSUs were safer,” she concluded. “There was no guarantee the shuttles would survive the hundred-kilometer-per-second crash into Cube World’s atmosphere. One of them, the Purpose, did not. Leo thought the gamble was worth it. A megalomaniac’s collateral damage.”

  Maria sobbed.

  “But,” Collette said, diverting attention from her, “Leo’s sabotage didn’t kill Ascendant, and neither did Gabe—they hadn’t arrived on our island when that happened. Her CSU log wasn’t wiped until later, right, Gabe?”

  Gabe nodded. “Leo didn’t want problems about how we got here confusin’ people about what to do now that we were here.”

  “Ascendant, do you know who turned off your CSU power, while you slept?”

  “Actually, I don’t. We are all scanned, but only every few nights. The caretaker didn’t happen to be watching.”

  “No matter. I think I know. There were two shuttles,” Collette said. “Leo and Gabe were on one, and on the other...”

  Arroya Montez quietly tried to slip away from the fire, thus assuring that all eyes fell on her. Evgenie got up to go after her.

  “Arroya,” Ascendant called after her “I’m not dead, so there is no murder, and I assure you I am no danger to your happiness with Evgenie. Be at peace. I forgive you.”

  Gabe groaned, “Now come on, you’re tryin’ to sound like...”

  Their eyes locked and Gabe’s face lost its color. Very slowly, he asked, “That whatch-youcallit, library node, they found in the Solar System. It hasn’t been there three thousand years or so, has it?”

  “More like three million, Gabe.” Ascendant wasn’t smiling.

  Gabe fell silent. Jacques imagined an orchestra playing Also Sprach Zarathustra.

  “How far back does the oldest part of you go?” Doc asked. “When did the Universe become conscious?”

  “The eldest we know of came from a planet about a star much like this one in a dwarf galaxy now beyond the universal expansion event horizon. They were much closer nine billion years ago and spread their—I think ‘culture’ would be the best word—far and wide. Their ethics became the model for everyone since, though great minds have thought alike in this area.

  “Speaking of ethics, Jacques, Leo should be here.”

  Jacques nodded, contacted the Intrepid and directed that its robots bring Leo to the gathering, unrestrained. No one had anything to fear from him, not ever again.

  When he arrived, he looked at Gabe, Jacques, and then, tight-lipped, at Ascendant.

  “I’m Ascendant Chryse,” she said.

  “The shuttle told me.” Leo’s voice was tense, his tone defiant.

  “We know everything,” Collette said.

  “You may forgive yourself, in time,” Doc said.

  Leo snorted. “Forgive myself? I’m proud of what I tried, damn it. I tried to save mankind from this damned, banal, inhuman fate. I tried at 36 Ophiuchi and I tried here. You aren’t human, Chryse. You’re not more than human, you’re less. You’re an abomination. An alien puppet.”

  Leo pulled out a gun; he apparently had a stash of them somewhere, Jacques realized.

  Doc laughed. As the others realized the futility of Leo’s weapon they began to laugh as well. Except Ascendant, who looked very sad.

  “Yeah, real funny.” Leo said. “Well, I’m betting you aliens are just too damned civilized for eternal torture. I quit.”

  He turned the gun on himself. Nobody made a move or said a thing to stop him. He managed to fire five times before collapsing.

  Everyone looked at Ascendant. She had a tear in her eye. “I could have done something, but I am informed that wisdom lies in respecting his wishes. He won’t be revived; that would be torture.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 20

  As in the Beginning

  Before they left for the Solar System, Jacques and Collette visited Face One a last time. With power-assisted wings, they covered the distance in three days, reliving adventures and overnighting at Rim Camp and River Camp, before ending up at Ascendant Chryse’s lodge near Eagle’s Nest. Soob, Helen, Doc, and their children were there. The oldest, Athena, was now approaching puberty, and as clever as her mother.

  “Are you sure?” Jacques asked Ascendant.

  Ascendant put her arms around him, acknowledging that in some alternative existence, and perhaps some future one, they were soulmates.

  “This is where I belong now,” she said. “We need to develop a different view perspective of time; by Galactic standards, I am really not so far away. Besides, I’m pregnant!”

  Soob was grinning ear from ear. “I’m going to enjoy exploring the other cube faces and renewing acquaintances with other resurrectees.”

  “And someone needs to keep the fear of god in Gabe,” Helen added.

  Doc chuckled. “Gabe enjoys leading, and the people with him enjoy being led. Their first generation is just coming of age. I’ll enjoy watching them rebel.”

  “The galactic data base here is larger than the library node in the Solar System,” Helen said, “and with my family, I’m really happy. So come back in a couple of millennia!”

  Then they said their farewells, Collette took his hand, perhaps a bit firmly, and led him back to the Fortitude. Hours later, with them aboard, Resolution III picked up the beam to Earth.

  Within a day, Cube World’s star shrank noticeably. When it dimmed to about the same apparent luminosity as Antares, they made love once more, then entered their CSUs. Years later, they revived briefly to gape at the glowing red mist of the supergiant star as its gravity bent them toward Earth. But it too dwindled, and Jacques made one last check of his enhanced emergency kit and permitted the CSU’s transparent lid to settle down over him for the six-hundred-year journey. For him, the thirty-third century had ended, and the thirty-ninth would soon begin.

  Copyright © 2009 G. David Nordley