Olmy surveyed the ghost’s features, then shook his head and smiled. “Hello, Neya.”
“It will give my original joy to find you well,” the partial said. “You seem lost, Ser Olmy.”
Olmy did not know what form of speech to use with a ghost. Should he address it with respect due to the original, a corprep and a woman of influence … The last woman he had tried to be in love with … Or as he might address a servant?
“I come here often,” he said. “These are old acquaintances.”
The image looked concerned. “Poor Olmy. Still don’t belong anywhere.”
Olmy ignored this. He looked for the ghost’s source. It was being projected from a small, fist-sized flier hovering several meters away.
“I’m here on behalf of my original, corporeal representative Neya Taur Rinn,” the ghost said. “You do realize … I am not her?”
“I’m not ignorant,” Olmy said, finding himself once more at a disadvantage with this woman.
The ghost seemed to fix her gaze on him. The image, of course, was not actually doing the seeing. “The presiding minister of the Way, Yanosh Ap Kesler, instructed me to find you. My original was reluctant. I hope you understand.”
Olmy folded his hands behind his back as the partial picted a series of ID symbols: Office of the Presiding Minister, Hexamon Nexus Office of Way Defense, Office of Way Maintenance. Quite a stack of bureaucracies, Olmy thought, Way Maintenance currently being perhaps the most powerful and arrogant of them all.
“What does Yanosh want with me?” he asked.
The ghost lifted her hands and pointed her index finger into her palm, tapping with each point. “You supported him in his bid to become presiding minister of the Seventh Chamber and the Way. You’ve become a symbol for the advance of Geshel interests.”
“Against my will,” Olmy said. Yanosh, a fervent progressive and Geshel, had sent Olmy to Lamarckia—and had also brought him back and arranged for his new body. Olmy for his part had never known quite which camp he belonged to: conservative Naderites, grimly opposed to the extraordinary advances of the last century, or the enthusiastically progressive Geshels. Neya Taur Rinn’s people were Geshels of an ancient radical faction, among the first to move into Axis City.
The partial continued. “Ser Kesler has won re-election as presiding minister of the Way and now also serves as mayor of three precincts in Axis City.”
“I’m aware.”
“Of course. The presiding minister extends his greetings and hopes you are agreeable.”
“I am very agreeable,” Olmy said mildly. “I stay out of politics and disagree with nobody. I can’t pay back Yanosh for all he has done—but then, I have rendered him due service as well. Yanosh knows I’ve put myself on permanent leave.” He did not like being baited—and could not understand why Yanosh would send Neya to fetch him. The presiding minister knew enough about Olmy’s private life—probably too much. Olmy could not restrain himself. “Pardon me for boldness, but I’m curious. How do you feel? Do you actually think you are Neya Taur Rinn?”
The partial smiled. “I am a high-level partial given subordinate authority by my original,” it said. She said … Olmy decided he would not cut such fine distinctions.
“Yes, but what does it feel like?” he asked.
“At least you’re still alive enough to be curious,” the partial said.
“Your original regarded my curiosity as a kind of perversity,” Olmy said.
“A morbid curiosity,” the partial returned, clearly uncomfortable. “I couldn’t stand maintaining a relationship with a man who wanted to be dead.”
“You rode my fame until I bored you,” Olmy rejoined, then regretted the words.
The partial seemed to consider how to respond. “To answer your question, I feel everything my original would feel. And my original would hate to see you here. What do you feel like, Ser Olmy?” The ghost’s arm swung out to indicate the urns, the columbarium. “Walking among the truly dead—that’s pretty melodramatic.”
That a ghost could remember their time together, could carry tales of this meeting to her original—to a woman he had admired with all that he had left of his heart—both irritated and intrigued him. “You were attracted to me because of my history.”
“I was attracted to you because of your strength,” the ghost said. “It hurt me that you were so intent on living in your memories.”
“I clung to you.”
“And to nobody else …”
“I don’t come here often,” Olmy said. He shook his hands out by his side and stepped back. “All my finest memories are on a world I can never go back to. Real loves … real life. Not like Thistledown now.” He squinted at the image. The ghost’s focus was precise; still, there was something false about it, a glossy, prim neatness unlike Neya. “You didn’t help.”
The ghost’s expression softened. “I don’t take the blame entirely, but your distress doesn’t please my original.”
“I didn’t say I was in distress. I feel a strange peace, in fact. Why did Yanosh send you? Why did you agree to come?”
The ghost reached out to him. Her hand passed through his arm. She apologized for this breach of etiquette. “For your sake, to get you involved, and for the sake of my original, please, at least speak to our staff. The presiding minister needs you to join an expedition.” She seemed to consider for a moment, then screw up her courage. “There’s trouble at the Redoubt.”
Olmy felt a sting of shock at the mention of that name. The conversation had suddenly become more than a little risky. He shook his head vigorously. “I do not acknowledge even knowing of such a place,” he said.
“You know more than I do,” the partial said. “I’ve been assured that it’s real. Way Defense tells the Office of Way Maintenance that it now threatens us all.”
“I’m not comfortable holding this conversation in a public place,” Olmy protested.
This seemed to embolden the partial, and it projected Neya’s image closer. “This area is quiet and clean. No one listens.”
Olmy stared up at the high glass ceiling.
“We are not being observed,” the partial insisted. “The Nexus and Way Defense are concerned that the Jarts are closing in on that sector of the Way. I am told that if they occupy it and gain control of the Redoubt, Thistledown might as well be ground to dust and the Way set on fire like a piece of string. That scares my original. It scares me as I am now. Does it bother you in the least, Olmy?”
Olmy looked along the rows of urns … Centuries of Thistledown history, lost memory, now turned to pinches of ash—or less.
“Yanosh says he’s positive you can help,” the partial said with a strong lilt of emotion. “It’s a way to rejoin the living and make a new place for yourself.”
“Why should that matter to you? To your original?” Olmy asked.
“Because my original still regards you as a hero. I still hope to emulate your service to the Hexamon.”
Olmy smiled wryly. “Better to find a living model,” he said. “I don’t belong out there. I’m rusted over.”
“That is not true,” the partial said. “You have been given a new body. You are youthful and strong, and very experienced …” She seemed about to say more, but hesitated, rippled again, and faded abruptly. Her voice faded as well, and he heard only “Yanosh says he’s never lost faith in you—”
The floor of the columbarium trembled. The solidity of Thistledown seemed to be threatened; a quake through the asteroid material, an impact from outside … or something occurring within the Way. Olmy reached out to brace himself against a pillar. The golden spheres vibrated in their suspensions, jangling like hundreds of small bells.
From far away, sirens began to wail.
The partial reappeared. “I have lost contact with my original,” it said, its features blandly stiff. “Somethin
g has broken my link with City Memory.”
Olmy watched Neya’s image with fascination as yet untouched by any visceral response.
“I do not know when or if there will be a recovery,” she said. “There’s a failure on Axis City.” Suddenly the image appeared puzzled, then stricken. She held out her phantom arms. “My original …” As if she were made of solid flesh, her face crinkled with fear. “She’s died. I’ve died. Oh my God, Olmy!”
Olmy tried to understand what this might mean, under the radical new rules of life and death for Geshels such as Neya. “What’s happened? What can I do?”
The image flickered wildly. “My body is gone. There’s been a complete system failure. I don’t have any legal existence.”
“What about the whole-life records? Connect with them.” Olmy walked around the unsteady image, as if he might capture it, stop it from fading.
“I kept putting it off … So stupid! I haven’t put myself in City Memory yet.”
He tried to touch her and of course could not. He could not believe what she was saying, yet the sirens still wailed, and another small shudder ran through the thick walls of the asteroid.
“I have no place to go. Olmy, please! Don’t let me just end!” The ghost of Neya Taur Rinn drew herself up, tried to compose herself. “I have only seconds before …”
Olmy felt a sudden and intense attraction to the shimmering image. He wanted to know what actual death, final death, could possibly feel like. He reached out again, as if to embrace her.
She shook her head. The flickering increased. “It feels so strange—losing—”
Before she could finish, the image vanished completely.
Olmy’s arms hung around empty air.
The sirens continued to wail, audible throughout Alexandria. He slowly dropped his arms, all too aware of being alone. The projector flew in a small circle, emitting small wheeping sounds. Without instructions from its source, it could not decide what to do.
For a moment, he shivered and his neck hair pricked—a sense of almost religious awe he had not experienced since his time on Lamarckia.
Olmy had started walking toward the end of the hall before he consciously knew what to do. He turned right to exit through the large steel doors and looked up through the thin clouds enwrapping the second chamber, through the glow of the flux tube to the axis borehole on the southern cap. His eyes were warm and wet. He wiped them with the back of his hand and his breath hitched.
Emergency beacons had switched on around the flux tube, forming a bright ring two thirds of the way up the cap.
His shivering continued, and it angered him. He had died once already, yet this new body was afraid of dying, and its wash of emotions had taken charge of his senses.
Deeper still and even more disturbing was a scrap of the old loyalty … To his people, to the vessel that bore them between the stars, that served as the open chalice of the infinite Way. A loyalty to the woman who had found him too painful to be with.
“Neya!” he moaned. Perhaps she had been wrong. A partial might not have access to all information; perhaps things weren’t as bad as they seemed.
But he had never felt Thistledown shake so.
Olmy hurried to the rail terminal three city squares away, accompanied by throngs of curious and alarmed citizens. Barricades had been set across the entrances to the northern cap elevators; all inter-chamber travel was temporarily restricted. No news was available.
Olmy showed the ID marks on his wrist to a cap guard, who scanned them quickly and transmitted them to her commanders. She let him pass, and he entered the elevator and rode swiftly to the borehole.
Within the workrooms surrounding the borehole waited an arrowhead-shaped official transport, as the presiding minister’s office had requested. None of the soldiers or guards he questioned knew what had happened. There were still no official pronouncements on any of the citizen nets. Olmy rode the transport, accompanied by five other officials, through the vacuum above the atmospheres of the next four chambers, threading the boreholes of each of the massive concave walls that separated them. None of the chambers showed any sign of damage.
In the southern cap borehole of the sixth chamber, Olmy transferred from the transport to a tuberider, designed to run along the singularity that formed the core of the Way. On this most unusual railway, he sped at many thousands of miles per hour toward the Axis City at 4 ex 5—four hundred thousand kilometers north of Thistledown.
A few minutes from Axis City, the tuberider slowed and the forward viewing port darkened. There was heavy radiation in the vicinity, the pilot reported. Something had come down the Way at relativistic velocity and struck the northern precincts of Axis City.
Olmy had no trouble guessing the source.
2
A day passed before Olmy could see the presiding minister. Emergency repairs on Axis City had rendered only one precinct, Central City, habitable; the rest, including Axis Prime and Axis Nader, were being evacuated. Axis Prime had taken the brunt of the impact. Tens of thousands had lost their lives, both Geshels and Naderites.
Naderites by and large did not participate in the practice of storing their body patterns and recent memories as insurance against such a calamity.
Some Geshels would receive their second incarnation—many thousands more would not. City Memory itself had been damaged. Even had Neya taken the time to make her whole-life record and store her patterns, she might still have died.
The last functioning precinct, Central City, now contained the combined offices of Presiding Minister of the Way and the Axis City government, and it was here that Yanosh met with Olmy.
“Her name was Deirdre Enoch,” the presiding minister said, floating over the transparent external wall of the new office. His body was wrapped below the chest in a shining blue medical support suit; the impact had broken both of his legs and caused severe internal injuries. For the time being, the presiding minister was a functioning cyborg, until new organs could be grown and placed. “She opened a gate illegally at 3 ex 9, fifty years ago. Just beyond the point where we last repulsed the Jarts. She was helped by a master gate opener who deliberately disobeyed Nexus and guild orders. We learned about the breach six months after she had smuggled eighty of her colleagues—or maybe a hundred and twenty, we aren’t sure how many—into a small research center, just days after the gate was opened. There was nothing we could do to stop it.”
Olmy gripped a rail that ran around the perimeter of the office, watching Kesler without expression. The irony was too obvious. “I’ve only heard rumors. Way Maintenance—”
Kesler was hit by a wave of pain, quickly damped by the suit. He continued, his face drawn. “Damn Way Maintenance. Damn the in-fighting and politics.” He forced a smile. “Last time it was a Naderite renegade on Lamarckia.”
Olmy nodded.
“This time—Geshel. Even worse—a member of the Openers Guild. I never imagined running this damned starship would ever be so complicated. Makes me almost understand why you long for Lamarckia.”
“It wasn’t any easier there,” Olmy said.
“Yes—but there were fewer people.” Yanosh rotated his support suit and crossed the chamber. “We don’t know precisely what happened. Something disturbed the immediate geometry around the gate. The conflicts between Way physics and the universe Enoch accessed were too great. The gate became a lesion, impossible to close. By that time, most of Enoch’s scientists had retreated to the main station, a protective pyramid—what she called the Redoubt.”
“She tapped into chaos?” Olmy asked. Some universes accessed through the Way were empty voids, dead, useless but relatively harmless; others were virulent, filled with a bubbling stew of unstable “constants” that reduced the reality of any observer or instrumentality. Only two such gates had ever been opened in the Way; the single fortunate aspect of these disasters had been that
the gates themselves had quickly closed and could not be reopened.
“Not chaos,” Kesler said, swallowing and bowing his head at more discomfort.
“You should be resting,” Olmy said.
“No time. The Opener’s Guild tells me Enoch was looking for a domain of enhanced structure—hyper-order. What she found was more dangerous than any chaos. Her gate may have opened into a universe of endless, fecund change. Not just order: creativity. Every universe is in a sense a plexus, its parts connected by information links; but Enoch’s universe contained no limits to the propagation of information. No finite speed of light, no separation between anything analogous to the Bell continuum and other physicality.”
Olmy frowned. “My knowledge of Way physics is shaky …”
“Ask your beloved Konrad Korzenoswki,” Kesler snapped.
Olmy did not respond to this provocation.
Kesler apologized under his breath and floated slowly back across the chamber, his face contorted by pain and frustration. “We lost three expeditions trying to save her people and close the gate. The last was six months ago. Something like life-forms had grown up around the main station, fueled by the lesion. They’ve became huge, and unimaginably bizarre. No one can make sense of them. What was left of our last expedition managed to build a barrier about a thousand kilometers south of the lesion. We thought that would give us the luxury of a few years to decide what to do next. But that barrier has been destroyed. We’ve not been able to get close enough since to discover what’s happened. And some of our defenses have already been defeated.” He looked down through the transparent floor at the segment of the Way twenty-four kilometers below. “The Jarts were able to send a relativistic projectile along the flaw, over the area of the Redoubt—hardly more than a gram of rest mass. We couldn’t stop it. It struck Axis City at twelve hundred hours yesterday.”
Olmy had been told the details of the attack: A pellet less than a millimeter in diameter, traveling very close to the speed of light. Only the safety and control mechanisms of the sixth chamber machinery had kept the entire Axis City from disintegrating. The original of Neya Taur Rinn had been conducting business on behalf of her boss, Yanosh, in Axis Prime while her partial had visited Olmy.