Eon (Eon, 2)

  He had the sensation that much of what he remembered about his life consisted of logical reconstructions. The entire left side of his body felt fresh and new, had a different odor, as it were. He realized it wasn't the body that was new, but the corresponding section of his head.

  The first few days, Mirsky had thought all might go well. He believed he could become used to his status as a Lazarus; he made it seem like a joke, that he was back from the dead, this to gently discredit Pogodin's testimony that Vielgorsky had blown Mirsky's brains out. But the joke had not worked.

  To the soldiers who had stood guard outside the library, it had seemed as tightly sealed and oppressive as a tomb. And what did you find in a tomb. . . ?

  His joke had then become a grim evaluation of reality. Nobody dared flout his rule now; he was a ghost, not the freshly promoted Colonel suddenly made Lieutenant General, not Pavel Mirsky, but a stranger from the depths of the third chamber city.

  Superstition. An incredible force among soldiers.

  And so, after a week of rule, of struggling to be what his past demanded he be, he had returned to the library. He had been afraid to come back until now, worried that the three political officers would be there to greet him, shoot him all over again.

  Superstition.

  He had waited for those inside to leave—first, the Chinese man and woman, and then a single Russian, Corporal Rodhzhensky. Only when the library was empty had he entered.

  And he had shouted himself hoarse.

  He sat in a chair, hand fumbling at the data pillar controls, lifting the lid and dropping it. Finally, he inserted his fingertips into the five hollows. "Law," he demanded. "Law in a deserted city."

  The library asked more questions, narrowing his search to a manageable subject.

  "Murder," he said.

  The material was rich and detailed. Murder was an offense punishable by psychological evaluation and retailoring of the personality, if such was called for.

  "What if there is nobody to carry out the punishment?"

  It is not punishment, the research voice said, it is redemption, a refitting for society.

  "What if there's no law, no police, no judges, or courts or psychologists?"

  Suspects can be detained for nineteen days. If that time passes and no judgment is made, or charges specified, suspects are released to the custody of a reintegration counseling clinic.

  "And if there's no clinic?"

  Suspects are released on their own recognizance.

  "Where will they be released?"

  Unless otherwise requested, at the scene of their incarceration.

  "Where are they taken after capture?"

  If they are captured in a structure of adequate size for an emergency medical facility—

  He saw a portion of the library, behind a seamless door in the north wall, used as an example: two small, equipment-packed rooms.

  —then they are held under sedation until authorities retrieve them or nineteen days have passed. Medical workers serve as police units in emergency.

  He had two more days.

  Mirsky returned to the fourth chamber and made a pretense of being the commander for a few hours. He met with Hoffman and Rimskaya to continue discussions about opening the second and third chamber city spaces to "settlers."

  He then sneaked away, picked up an AKV and returned to the third chamber. Five people were in the library, Rodhzhensky again and four NATO people, one of them a United States Marine. Mirsky patiently waited for them to go, and entered the library with rifle in hand.

  He had given the political officers one chance. If they were released, they would only come for him again. He would stay in the library for the next two days, waiting patiently. . . .

  The library remained deserted for several hours. In that time, he realized that his plan was useless. The library would not stay deserted for long. He had to carry out his executions—murders—in secret, or they would be worse than useless. Unless he destroyed the three political officers even more thoroughly than they had destroyed him, they would be resurrected, and he would be incarcerated for nineteen days, and it would all begin again—a cycle of insanity and violence beyond the dreams even of Gogol.

  He walked to the wall behind which the three political officers waited, unconscious, and lowered the rifle to the floor at the northern edge of the array of seats, blinking rapidly.

  "I'm not the same person you killed," he said. "Why should I take revenge?"

  Even if he felt that he was the same person, this could be an excuse. He could do what he realized he had wanted to do for years. Perhaps the clarity had been brought on by the destruction of some irrational section of his thinking, releasing another impulse, truer and cleaner.

  Mirsky had always wanted the stars, but not at the price of his soul. And working within a Soviet system—even one such as he would have tried to establish—would always mean working against people like Belozersky, Yazykov and Vielgorsky. Their faces kept reappearing throughout Russian history: the vicious lackeys and the capable but cruel and slightly askew leader.

  He would break from the cycle. He had the chance now. His homeland was gone. His duty was over; he had already died for his men once. Perhaps if Major General Sosnitsky had survived. . . But then, if the Major General were still alive, Mirsky wouldn't be in this position. Sosnitsky would be.

  He left the library and rode the train to the fourth chamber fort. There, he gathered supplies into a truck—nobody questioning his intentions, not even Pletnev, who regarded him from some meters away with a look of mild puzzlement.

  "They'll be glad to be rid of me," Mirsky thought. "They can get on with their intrigues and cruelties. The political triumvirate will return to take their rightful places. I've been an impediment all along. . . .”

  His last duty was to write a message for Garabedian.

  Viktor:

  The three political officers will return. They will be in the third chamber library sometime within the next forty hours. Accept them as your leaders if you wish; I will no longer impede them.

  Pavel

  He left the message in an envelope in Garabedian's tent.

  Mirsky drove the truck into the woods, heading for the as-yet-unexplored 180 point. There he could be alone, perhaps build a raft and pole across a shallow lake to a tree-covered island, or just explore the thick woods visible fifty kilometers directly overhead.

  And he would decide what to do next.

  He did not think he would return.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  The flawship's interior, crowded with privileged citizens and dignitaries, was even more free-form than Olmy's craft. The surfaces varied from oyster pearl to abalone gray, and there seemed to be no edge or corner; only one spacious, long cabin, wrapped around the three-meter-wide flaw passage and propulsion machinery. People of a bewildering variety of body styles tracted from point to point in the cabin, exchanging picts or conversing in English or Chinese. Some sipped drinks from free-floating charged globules of fluid, which somehow managed to avoid passersby with both grace and anticipatory intelligence.

  Lanier had barely gotten the hang of maneuvering with the traction fields. Farley seemed more adept—a natural gymnast, which caused him some chagrin. He applied himself more diligently to learning the skill. "This is lovely," she confessed, spinning slowly next to him, then reaching out and braking against the gently glowing violet sheet of a field.

  Heineman and Carrolson helped each other along between the homorphs and neomorphs, smiling stiffly and nodding, hoping that—as Olmy had told them—they would find it almost impossible to do something socially unacceptable. Anything they did, any mistake they made, would be considered charming. They were, after all, "quaint."

  Patricia tried to keep to herself, clutching her bag containing slate, processor and multi-meter. She was not in the least successful at being inconspicuous.

  Suli Ram Kikura tracted toward Patricia and intercepted the rapid pictings of a man
whose skin had the sheen of black hematite. The man apologized in a few simple picts for his assumption that Patricia knew the highest degrees of graphicspeak. Then, in moderately accomplished English—no doubt picked up in a quick gloss a few minutes before boarding—he launched into a complicated discussion of early terrestrial economics. Kikura had wandered off to smooth over another complication—Lanier was being determinedly, if slowly, pushed into a broad dimple by two lean and striking women. The women were dressed in full-length leotards with long, alternately stiff and supple fantails of fabric stretched between their legs and under their arms. They resembled fancy goldfish; there was little he or Farley could do to discourage them.

  Patricia listened to the man's discourse for several minutes before saying, "I'm pretty ignorant about that. My specialty is physics."

  The man stared at her and she could almost hear him switching over to a recently programmed portion of his implant. "Yes, that's fascinating. So much of physics was in ferment in your time—"

  Olmy moved in quickly and picted something Patricia did not understand. The man moved away resentfully, a thin circle of red around his face.

  "Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea," Olmy said, escorting her to where the Frant was engaged in conversation with two neomorphs, one a radiolarian, the other recognizable as the Director of the Nexus, Hulane Ram Seija.

  "I suppose we have to get used to it," Patricia said. Why get used to it? she asked herself. She didn't plan on staying forever.

  "Ser Ram Seija," the Frant said, turning toward her, "here is our first guest." The Frant's wide-extended eyes seemed to naturally convey humor and good spirits. Though she found the word guest euphemistic, at best, she did not resent the Frant's using it.

  "I've been looking forward to a chance to talk with you, someplace out of chambers," Ram Seija said. "Though this hardly seems the best time. . .”

  Patricia focused on his face, projected at mid-level on the sphere that was his body. She had a distinct impression she was on a ride in Disneyland, seeing something extraordinary with a perfectly mundane explanation. She didn't answer for some time, and then snapped herself out of her reverie, saying, "Yes, certainly."

  "You'll enjoy Timbl, our world," the Frant said. "We've been long-time clients of the Hexamon. It's a very tame gate, long established."

  "We'll go there first," Ram Seija said. "A journey of four hours to the Frant gate at four ex six, and then a leisurely two-day rest stop. We're hoping the President can break away from his conference to meet us."

  Four ex six—four million kilometers down the corridor—merely a hop, skip and jump, she thought. And for every thousand kilometers, an advance of one year in time; for every fraction of a millimeter, entry into an alternate universe. . .

  How much closer to home?

  "I look forward to meeting it—him, and to visiting Timbl," she said, acquiescing to the spirit of the occasion.

  "We're requested at the bow," Lanier said, brushing by with Farley. Heineman and Carrolson were already on their way. The crowds parted before them; she had never seen so many smiling faces, or felt so much interest in her person. She hated it. She wanted to run and hide.

  Feeling through her jumpsuit for the letter from Paul, finding it and pressing it, she followed the Frant and Olmy toward the bow of the flawship.

  Senator Oyu was there, with three Naderite homorphs from Axis Thoreau, all historians. They smiled and made room for the five. The flawship captain, a neomorph with a masculine human trunk and a serpentine body from the waist down, fully three meters in length, joined them last.

  "The honor for starting our short journey goes to the first guest to arrive at the Axis City," the captain said. Patricia took his hand and tracted into position at the bow, near the flaw passage. "Miss Vasquez, would you like to do the honors? Simply ask the flawship to begin."

  "Let's go," Patricia said softly.

  A sharp-edged circle about five meters in diameter cleared to one side of the flaw passage, offering them a view of the Way. They seemed to float high above the lanes of traffic and the gate terminals. The ineffably glistening line of the singularity glowed hot pink just beyond the bow; for the moment, there was no sensation of motion.

  Patricia turned to look back at Olmy, Lanier and Farley. Lanier smiled at her; she smiled back. Despite everything, this was kind of exciting. She felt like an indulged and pampered child, visiting a party of very peculiar adults.

  We're the larvae, they're the butterflies, she thought.

  Within a half hour, the flawship was moving so rapidly—just over 104 kilometers per second—that the walls of the Way became a slick blur of black and gold. They had already traveled some 94,000 kilometers and were still accelerating. Ahead, the flaw pulsed deep red. Patricia felt Farley's hand on her shoulder.

  "It's amazing how much this is like a party on Earth," Farley said. "Not in Hopeh, but in Los Angeles or Tokyo. I went through Tokyo to get to Los Angeles, and then on to Florida. . . . There were quite a few receptions. The embassy party . . .” She shook her head and grinned. "Where the hell—what the hell are we, Patricia? I am very confused."

  "They're people, just like us," Patricia said.

  "I just don't—can't always believe what's happening. Inside, I go back to when I was a little girl in Hopeh, listening to my father teach. I escape."

  Bringing Ramon Tiempos de Los Angeles to read. . .

  "All parties get boring after a while. I'd rather be working," Patricia said, "but that wouldn't be sociable. Olmy wants us to be sociable."

  Suli Ram Kikura approached them, looking concerned.

  "Has anybody offended you?" she asked. "Or made improper offers?"

  "No," Farley said. "Patricia and I are just watching."

  "Of course. . . you're getting tired. Even Olmy forgets these necessities—sleep and rest."

  "I'm not tired," Patricia said. "I'm very alert, in fact."

  "I, as well," Farley agreed. "Perhaps 'dazed' is a better word."

  "You may seclude yourselves any time you wish," Ram Kikura said.

  "We'll just stay in the bow and watch," Patricia said. She floated with legs crossed in a lotus, and Farley did likewise.

  "We're fine," Farley said to the advocate. "We'll rejoin everybody shortly."

  Ram Kikura tracted aft to a group of neomorphs challenging each other with complex puzzle-picts.

  "It's not a bad place to be," Farley offered after a few minutes of silence. "These people aren't cruel."

  "Oh, no," Patricia said, shaking her head. "Olmy is helpful, and I like Kikura."

  "Before we left, she was talking to Garry and me about our rights in selling historical information. Or exchanging for advantage, she called it. Apparently we can access all sorts of valuable private data banks for what we have in our memories."

  "So I've heard," Patricia said.

  After an hour, Patricia, Heineman and Carrolson secluded themselves at the rear of the cabin. The Frant fended off the curious as they napped. Lanier and Farley were too wired to relax; they remained at the bow, watching the corridor race by. At the midpoint of their journey, after accelerating at just under six g's, the flawship was traveling some 416 kilometers per second; it then began to decelerate.

  In another two hours, the flawship had slowed to what seemed a crawl, only a few dozen kilometers an hour. Below, many of the broad silver-gray disks flew majestically above the lanes. Four large twisted-pyramid structures were discernible in the distance: the terminals covering the four gates to Timbl.

  Two homorphs joined them—slightly more radical models of Olmy's ilk, self-contained and largely artificial. They were dressed in blue-and-white body-suits that ballooned dramatically around the calves and forearms; one was female, though her hair was cut much like Olmy's, and the other was indeterminate. They smiled at Patricia and Farley and exchanged simple picts. Patricia touched her torque and replied; Farley flubbed her answer and made them laugh good-naturedly. The indeterminate one stepped
forward, a Chinese flag suddenly picted above the left shoulder.

  "We have not met," it began. "I am Sama Ula Rixor, special assistant to the President. My ancestors were Chinese. We have been discussing morphology of those times. Miss Farley, you are rare, are you not? You are Chinese, yet you have Caucasian features. Is it that you have had. . . what they called cosmetic surgery, available even then?"

  "No. . .” Farley said with some embarrassment. "I was born in China," she said, "But my parents were Caucasian—"

  Patricia tracted away from the stern, toward Lanier, Carrolson and Heineman. Ram Kikura glided up to them and indicated they would be leaving the flawship soon; a VIP disk shuttle was already leaving the gate terminal to take them aboard.

  Heineman was questioning Olmy about the identity of the Frant that had accompanied them, suspicious that it might have changed places with one of the nine other Frants riding with them. "It looks different. Are you sure it's the same Frant?"

  "They all look alike when they're mature," Olmy said. "Why does it matter?"

  "I just want to know where I stand with somebody," Heineman responded, reddening.

  "It's really not important," Olmy said. "Once they've homogenized and passed current memory to each other, one can take up where the other leaves off."

  Heineman wasn't convinced, but he decided it wasn't worth pursuing.

  The VIP transportation disk was as wide as the flawship was long. It ascended to within thirty meters of the axis, surface crawling with glowing sheets of charge picked up in the plasma field. The glow slipped away from the disk's upper surface like phosphorescent sea foam, and a circular opening appeared in the center.

  The flawship's hatches opened then, and the guests leaped out through the connecting fields in orderly pairs and triplets, hanging on to each other, tracing to the opening in the disk. Olmy took hold of Farley and Lanier and Lanier held Patricia; Ram Kikura took Carrolson's and Heineman's hands. Together, they flew with the rest of the group.