Distress

by Greg Egan

  “Several times. But what’s brought on the déjà vu ? Is all the mathematics going over your head?”

  “Well, yes, but that’s not the problem.” I glanced around the lobby; no one was likely to overhear us, but I didn’t want to add to the rumors about Mosala if I could help it. I said, “You looked like you were in a hurry. Maybe I’ll bore you with all my tribulations on the flight back to Phnom Penh.”

  “In a hurry? No, I was just going out for some air. If you’re not busy yourself, you’re welcome to join me.”

  I accepted gratefully. I’d been planning to eat, but I still had no real appetite – and it occurred to me that Lee might have some professional insights into technolibération which she’d be willing to share.

  As we stepped through the doors, though, I could see what she’d really meant by “going out for some air”: Mystical Renaissance had decided to show themselves, crowding the street outside the hotel. Banners read: TO EXPLAIN IS TO DESTROY! REVERE THE NUMEN! SAY NO TO TOE! T-shirts displayed Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Joseph Campbell, Fritjof Capra, the cult’s late founder Günter Kleiner, event artist Sky Alchemy – and even Einstein, poking his tongue out.

  No one was chanting slogans; after Janet Walsh’s confrontationist salvo, Mystical Renaissance had opted for a carnival atmosphere, all mime artists and fire-jugglers, palmists and tarot card readers. Tumbling firesticks cast oscillating deep-blue shadows everywhere, giving the street an oceanic cast. Bemused locals threaded their way through this obstacle course with expressions of weary resignation; they hadn’t asked to have a circus shoved down their throats. So far as I could see, it was only a few badge-wearing conference members who were availing themselves of the free entertainment, or giving money to the buskers and fortune-tellers.

  One of the cultists who’d stolen Albert was singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon”, accompanying himself on a keyboard – a common brand, like his T-shirt; both had IR programming ports. I paused in front of him, smiling appreciatively, while I invoked some notepad software I’d written several years before, and quietly typed instructions. As we walked away, his keyboard fell silent – every volume level set to zero – and Einstein sprouted a thought balloon which read: “Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas.”

  Lee gave me an admonishing look. I said, “Come on! He was begging for it.”

  Further down the street, a small theater group were in the middle of a compressed version of The Iceman Cometh , rewritten in contemporary MR vernacular. A woman in a clown costume tore at her hair and declaimed: “I’ve failed to be psychically attuned! Everyone in my net-clan would have remained closer to the healing numen, if only I’d respected their need to continue to be nourished by their imagination-driven self-narratives!” Images of tears flowed down her cheeks.

  I turned to Lee. “Well, I’m convinced. I’m joining up tomorrow. And to think: I used to take the fragile beauty of the sunset and reduce it to ugly technical jargon.”

  “If you think this is painful, you should hear their five-minute Mahabharata -as-Jungian-psychobabble.” She shuddered. “But the original remains intact, doesn’t it? And they have a right to their own … interpretation … as much as anyone.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  I said wearily, “I don’t know what these people hoped to gain by coming here. Even if they disrupted the conference, all the research has already taken place; it’s all going to be posted on the nets, regardless. And if the whole idea of a TOE offends them so deeply … they can just close their eyes to it, can’t they? They’ve closed their eyes to every other scientific discovery which has failed to meet their stringent spiritual requirements .”

  Lee shook her head. “It’s a matter of territorial defense. You must see that. A TOE effectively claims sovereignty over … the universe, and everyone in it. If a conference of lawyers in New York set themselves up as rulers of the cosmos, wouldn’t you be tempted to go and thumb your nose at them, at the very least?”

  I groaned. “Physics doesn’t claim sovereignty . Least of all here – where the whole aim is to find the one thing about the universe which physicists and technologists will never have the power to change. Using crude political metaphors like ‘sovereignty’ or ‘imperialism’ is just empty rhetoric; no one at this conference is sending troops to annex the weak force to the strong force. Unification isn’t being legislated or enforced . It’s being mapped .”

  Lee said portentously, “Ah, the power of maps —”

  “Oh, stop it, you know exactly what I mean! As in a map of the sky, not a map of … Kurdistan. And with no constellations drawn in … or stars named.” Lee smirked, as if she had a much, much longer list of culturally charged attributes in mind, and wasn’t going to let me off the hook until I’d ruled out every one of them. I said, “All right, forget the whole metaphor! But the fact is: exactly the same TOE underlies the universe – and keeps these cultists alive, juggling, and spouting gibberish – whether the evil reductionist physicists are allowed to discover it, or not.”

  “Not according to the Anthrocosmologists, it doesn’t.” Lee offered a conciliatory smile. “But – of course, yes, the laws of physics are whatever they are – and half of Mystical Renaissance would concede as much, in suitably evasive and conditional jargon. Most of them accept that the universe rules itself in some … systematic fashion. But they still feel deeply affronted by an explicit, mathematical formulation of that system.

  “You say they should be satisfied with personal ignorance, rather than trying to keep the TOE out of human hands entirely. And of course, they’ll go on believing whatever they like, even if a successful TOE is announced; they’ve never let scientific orthodoxy stand in their way before. But the very beliefs they’ve chosen to hold dictate that they can’t ignore the fact that physicists – and geneticists, and neurobiologists – are tunneling ever deeper beneath everybody’s feet, and dragging to the surface whatever they find there … and what they find will influence every culture on Earth, in the long run.”

  “And that’s reason enough to come here and intimidate innocent people with the mutilated corpse of Eugene O’Neill?”

  “Be fair: if you’re conceding them the right to believe what they like, that has to include the right to feel threatened.”

  The play was coming to a close; one of the actors was delivering a monologue on the need to show only compassion to poor scientists who’d lost touch with the soul of Gaia.

  I said, “So what do you call claiming to know the divine will of the Earth itself – if not an equally global land grab, couched in warmer and fuzzier terms?”

  Lee gave me a puzzled frown. “But of course. MR are like everyone else; they want to define the world on their own terms. They want to set the parameters, they want to make all the rules. Naturally, they’ve evolved an elaborate strategy to try to mask that fact – such as describing themselves with words like ‘generous’, ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ – but I’m certainly not suggesting that they’re any more humble, virtuous or tolerant than the most fanatical rationalist. I’m just trying to explain their beliefs to you as an outsider, as best I can.”

  “With your own universal explanatory scheme?”

  “Exactly. That’s my arduous duty: expert guide and interpreter to every subculture on Earth. The sociologist’s burden. But then, who else could shoulder it?” She smiled solemnly. “I am, after all, the only objective person on the planet.”

  We walked on through the warm night, passing right out of the carnival. After a minute or two, I turned and looked back. From a distance, it was an odd sight, compacted by perspective and framed by the surrounding buildings: a flamboyant sideshow embedded in the middle of a city – going about its ordinary life – which had built itself out of the ocean, molecule by molecule, and knew it . The adjacent streets certainly looked mundane and colorless in comparison – full of ordinary pedestrians: no one dressed a
s harlequins, no one juggling fire or swallowing swords – but the memory of the afternoon’s dive, and what it had revealed about the island, was enough to make all of the cult’s self-conscious exotica and desperately cheerful busyness fade into insignificance.

  I suddenly recalled what Angelo had said, the night before I left Sydney. We sanctify what we’re stuck with. Maybe that was the heart of it, for Mystical Renaissance. Most of the universe had been inexplicable, for most of human history – and MR had inherited the strand of the culture which had doggedly made a virtue out of that necessity. They’d stripped away – or fed through a cultural blender, in a kind of mock-pluralism – the historical baggage of most of the specific religions and other belief systems which had done the same, in their day … and then inflated what remained into the essence of Big-H itself. To sanctify mystery is to be “fully human.” Fail to do so, and you’re something less: “soulless”, “left-brained”, “reductionist” … and in need of being “healed.”

  James Rourke should have been here. The Battle for the H-words was in full swing.

  As we started back toward the hotel, I realized I’d meant to ask Lee a question which had almost slipped my mind.

  I said, “Who are the Anthrocosmologists?” The term sounded as if it should have meant something to me, but – vague etymological inferences aside – it didn’t.

  Lee was hesitant. “I doubt you really want to know. If Mystical Renaissance raise your ire…”

  “They’re an Ignorance Cult? I’ve never heard of them.”

  “They’re not an Ignorance Cult. And the word ‘cult’, of course, is terribly value-laden and pejorative; although I use it in the vernacular sense like everyone else, I really shouldn’t—”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what these people believe, and then I’ll make up my own mind exactly how intolerant and condescending to be toward them?”

  She smiled, but she looked genuinely pained, as if I was asking her to betray a confidence. “The ACs are extremely sensitive about … the way they’re represented. It was hard enough persuading them to talk to me at all, and they still won’t let me publish anything about them.”

  The ACs! I feigned indignation, trying to mask my jubilation. “What do you mean, ‘let’?”

  Lee said, “I agreed in advance to certain conditions – and I have to keep my word if I want their cooperation to continue. They’ve promised there’ll be a time when I can put everything on the nets – but until then, I’m on indefinite probation. Disclosing information to a journalist would destroy the whole relationship in an instant.”

  “I don’t want to publicize anything about them. This is purely off the record, I swear. I’m just curious.”

  “Then it won’t do you any harm to wait a few years, will it?”

  A few years? I said, “All right, I’m more than curious.”

  “Why?”

  I thought it over: I could tell her about Kuwale – and ask her to swear to keep it to herself, to avoid embroiling Mosala in any more unwelcome speculation. Except that … how could I ask her to betray one confidence while begging her to respect another? It would be pure hypocrisy – and if she was willing to swap secrets with me, what would her promise be worth?

  I said, “What have they got against journalists, anyway? Most cults are dying to recruit new members. What sort of ethos—?”

  Lee eyed me suspiciously. “I’m not going to be tricked into any more indiscretions. It’s my fault entirely that the name slipped out – but the topic is now closed. The Anthrocosmologists are a non-subject.”

  I laughed. “Oh, come on! This is absurd! You’re one of them, aren’t you? No secret handshakes; your notepad is sending out coded infrared: I am Indrani Lee, High Priestess of the Revered and Sacred Order—”

  She took a swat at me with the back of her hand; I pulled back just in time. She said, “They certainly don’t have priestesses .”

  “You mean they’re sexist? All male?”

  She scowled. “ Or priests. And I’m not saying anything more.”

  We walked on in silence. I took out my notepad and gave Sisyphus several meaningful glances. The full word had unlocked no Aladdin’s cave of data, though: every search on “Anthrocosmologists” came up blank.

  I said, “I apologize. No more questions, no more provocation. What if I really do need to get in touch with them, though, but I just can’t tell you why?”

  Lee was unmoved. “That sounds unlikely.”

  I hesitated. “Someone called Kuwale has been trying to contact me. Ve’s been sending me cryptic messages for days. But ve failed to turn up at an arranged meeting last night – so I just want to find out what’s going on.” Almost none of this was true, but I wasn’t going to admit that I’d screwed up a perfect opportunity to discover for myself what AC was about. In any case, Lee remained impassive; if she’d heard the name before, she showed no sign of it.

  I said, “Can’t you pass on the message that I want to speak to them? Give them the right to choose for themselves whether or not to turn me down?”

  She stopped walking. A cultist on stilts reached down and thrust a stack of edible pamphlets in her face, MR’s own Einstein Conference Newsletter in the non-electronic edition. Lee waved the woman away irritably. “You’re asking a lot. If they take offense, and I lose five years’ work…”

  I thought: You wouldn’t lose five years’ work; you’d finally be free to publish. But it didn’t seem diplomatic to put it that way.

  I said, “I first heard the term Anthrocosmologists from Kuwale, not you. So you don’t even have to tell them that you admitted knowing anything. Just say I asked you more or less at random – that I’ve been asking everyone at the conference, and I just happened to include you.”

  She hesitated. I said, “Kuwale was dropping hints about … violence. So what am I supposed to do? Just forget about ver? Or start trying to navigate my way through whatever bizarre apparatus Stateless employs for dealing with suspicious disappearances? ”

  Lee gave me a look which seemed to imply that she hadn’t been taken in by any of this – but then she said begrudgingly, “If I tell them you’ve been blundering around shooting your mouth off, I suppose they can’t hold that against me.”

  “Thank you.”

  She didn’t look happy. “ Violence? Against whom?”

  I shook my head. “Ve didn’t say. I mean, it may all come to nothing, but I still have to follow it up.”

  “I want to hear everything, when you do.”

  “You will, I promise.”

  We’d arrived back at the theater group, who were now acting out a laborious fable about a child with cancer … whose life could only be saved if he was kept from hearing the – stressful, immunosuppressant – truth. Look, Ma, real science! Except that the effects of stress on the immune system had been amenable to pharmacological control for the last thirty years.

  I stood and watched for a while, playing devil’s advocate against my own first impressions, trying to convince myself that there might be some real insight hidden in the story: some eternal verity which transcended the outdated medical contingencies.

  If there was, I honestly couldn’t find it. The earnest clowns might as well have been envoys from another planet, for all that they conveyed to me about the world we supposedly shared.

  And if I was wrong, and they were right? If everything I saw as specious contrivance was, in fact, luminous with wisdom? If this clumsy, sentimental fairy tale spoke the deepest truth about the world?

  Then I was more than wrong . I was utterly deluded. I was lost beyond redemption – a foundling from another cosmology, another logic entirely, with no place in this one at all.

  There was no possibility of compromise, no question of building bridges. We couldn’t both be “half-right.” Mystical Renaissance endlessly proclaimed that they’d found “the perfect balance” between mysticism and rationality – as if the universe had been waiting for this cozy detente before deciding how
to conduct itself, and was, frankly, relieved that the conflicting parties had been able to reach an amicable settlement which would respect everyone’s delicate cultural sensibilities and give due weight to everyone’s views. Except, of course, the view that the human ideals of balance and compromise – however laudable in political and social spheres – had absolutely nothing to do with the way the universe itself behaved.

  Humble Science! could denounce as “tyrants of scientism” anyone who expressed this opinion, Mystical Renaissance could call them “victims of psychic numbing” who needed to be “healed” … but even if the cults were right, the principle itself could not be diluted, reconciled with its opposites, brought into the fold. It was either true or false – or truth and falsehood were meaningless, and the universe was an incomprehensible blur.

  I thought: Empathy at last. If any of this was mutual – if MR felt half as alienated and dispossessed by the prospect of a TOE, as I did at the thought of their lunatic ideas shaping the ground beneath my feet – then I finally understood why they’d come here.

  The actors bowed. A few people – mainly other cultists in fancy dress – applauded. I suspected there’d been a happy ending; I’d stopped paying attention. I took out my notepad and transferred twenty dollars to the one they’d placed before them on the ground. Even Jungians in clown costumes had to eat: First Law of Thermodynamics.

  I turned to Indrani Lee. “Tell me, honestly: Are you really the one person who can step outside every culture, every belief system, every source of bias and confusion, and see the truth?”

  She nodded unassumingly. “Of course I am. Aren’t you?”

  #

  Back in my room, I stared blankly at the first page of Helen Wu’s most controversial Physical Review article – and tried to piece together how Sarah Knight could have stumbled on the Anthrocosmologists in the course of her research for Violet Mosala . Maybe Kuwale had heard about the project and approached her, just as ve’d approached me.