Garry Lanier emerged from the Talsit tent and saw Karen Lanier speaking with a group of farmers at the camp fence. The farmers had brought their children to the camp two weeks before for Talsit cleansing; they, at least, would not give birth to monsters, or suffer the long-term effects of radiation poisoning. But for the adults, there was still much suspicion and distrust; the early rumors of alien invasions and hordes of sky-traveling devils had seemed peculiarly convincing in the aftermath of the world's end. Karen's obvious pregnancy—six months along—did much to reassure them they were dealing with real human beings.
Lanier still had not told their story to any Earth-bound survivors. Who could absorb such an incredible and complicated tale when one's thoughts were on simple survival and the health of one's children, or sheep, or townspeople?
He stood with his hands in his overalls pockets and watched Karen talking quietly with the shepherds. They had lived and worked together since returning to Earth and had married two years ago. Their life was busy, and they were good for each other, but. . .
He was not yet content, not yet free of the manifold neuroses he had picked up in the past decade. At least he could feel the edges of his mental wounds puckering and healing, scarring up, perhaps even smoothing away.
Lanier only took physical Talsit sessions to cleanse his body; they were required at least every six months to prevent ill effects from the atmospheric radiation. He did not indulge in mental Talsit, whatever Olmy's urging; he was, after all, a rugged individualist, and he would rather accomplish those things on his own.
In a few months, he and Karen, if they could be spared from their labor here, would join Hoffman and Olmy and perhaps even Larry and Lenore. They would reload their temporary implants with new training, new data, and work with Earth's corprep, Rosen Gardner, and Earth's senator, Prescient Oyu, to coordinate the massive task of cleansing the atmosphere and reorganizing the survivors.
Paradoxically, the Naderites would soon have to deal with the infant cries of their own creed, which was rapidly gaining power in areas not yet touched by the reconstruction.
Lanier did not often think of the Way now, or of what had happened years past. His mind was too occupied with more immediate concerns.
But every now and then he would shut his eyes for a moment and open them again. He would turn to Karen and meet her sunny smile and run his hands through her yellow hair.
No sense worrying about those who were farther away than the souls of the dead.
Two - Journey Year 1181
Olmy stood in the Axis Euclid public observation chamber, hands folded behind his back, waiting for Korzenowski. Together they would try to convince Earth's chief advocate, Ram Kikura, that the legal rights of the survivors on Earth could not supersede the New Hexamon's duty to eventually force them to undergo Talsit purging. He gathered his arguments in his head:
If they were not purged mentally as well as physically, the condition of their thinking would be such that strife and discord would tear the Earth apart again, in centuries if not sooner. They had to be mentally healthy to face the future the New Hexamon was already structuring for them; there was no room for the kind of archaic, sick thinking that had led to the Death in the first place.
Olmy was not sure he could convince Ram Kikura, however. She had been rereading the Federalist Papers and consulting ancient constitutional law cases.
Korzenowski arrived, late as usual, and together they spent a few minutes watching the passage of continents, seas and clouds below. The horizon was still orange and gray with dust and ash in the stratosphere; where clouds parted, much of the land was covered with snow.
"Is your woman going to give us a hard time today?" the Engineer asked.
"No doubt," Olmy said.
Korzenowski smiled. "I have a confession. Another young woman has been giving me difficulties lately. Oh, I realize we should all be concentrating on the reconstruction. . . but I think you'll understand why my mind wanders."
Olmy nodded.
"She probably did not succeed," Korzenowski said.
"At going home?"
"It's very unlikely. I've been thinking about Way theory. Part of me keeps pursuing those problems. We understood the geometry stacks so little. When Patricia expressed her theories, they seemed right at the time. . . and they very nearly were. But not right enough to take her home."
"So where is she now?"
"That I cannot say." Korzenowski held one hand to the side of his head. "This persistence, though. . . this pressure to keep working on the problems. . . I can't say I object. The theory is fascinating. Thinking about it is one of the most enjoyable things I can do. And perhaps some day we can try again."
"From Earth?" Olmy asked.
"We still have the sixth chamber," Korzenowski said. "It wouldn't be nearly as difficult as it was before. And we could do it better."
Olmy didn't reply for some moments. "It may be inevitable," he conceded, "but let's not mention it to the Nexus right away."
"Of course," Korzenowski said. "After all this time, we—I am very patient." The Engineer's intense, sharp gaze, like that of a cat waiting to pounce, made the hair on Olmy's neck tingle.
He hadn't experienced such an atavistic response in years.
"Let's go fight the good fight with your advocate," Korzenowski suggested. They turned away from the view of Earth and took an elevator to the Nexus antechambers, where Suli Ram Kikura waited.
Three - Pavel Mirsky: Personal Record
If I am not too far off—or the distorting effects of our journey are not too difficult to calculate—then today is my thirty-second birthday.
I have settled in to life in the Central City, taking part in the rituals and exchanges of the Geshel life. I update my personality copies each week and make the acquaintance of dozens of citizens every day, many anxious to converse with me; and I work.
I study history. Those who assign work here believe that my perceptions and abilities make me a unique lens through which to view and interpret the past. Rodzhensky helps. He has adapted far more completely than I, and even plans, in his next incarnation, to take on a custom neomorph body.
I often meet with Joseph Rimskaya, but he is still morose and not very stimulating. I believe he is homesick and perhaps should not have defected. He plans to undergo Talsit therapy soon, though he has said that before. Beryl Wallace, the other American, we seldom see. She has been assigned to an observation party; a unique and sought-after job, in which I believe she must be serving more as a mascot than anything else, but I could be wrong. The implants can perform wonders.
I was never an intellectual. Philosophy bored me; questions of ultimate meaning and reality seemed pointless. I did not have the capacity for far stretches of the imagination. With the implants, all that has changed. I have taken a dozen more steps on the road to being a different person.
We have voyaged a considerable distance since achieving near light-speed. I do not believe anyone expected what is happening now. The Way is so complicated; even those who created it could not predict all of its possibilities.
We now journey down a ghost Way, its local nature altered by the violence of our near light-speed passage. It has no diameter or boundaries as such; objects with mass simply cannot exist beyond a distance of more than twenty thousand kilometers from the course on which we ride. (The flaw, or singularity, vanished three months ago. Simply evaporated in a pulse of newly created particles, some of them unknown even to the Geshels.)
We have traveled beyond the domain of the super-set of external universes which encompassed all our various world-lines. Even were we to stop now and open gates to the "outside," whatever that may be, we would encounter realms without matter, perhaps without form or order; it is highly doubtful we would find anything familiar.
There are an infinite number of alternatives to the Way, each originating in an alternative world-line, yet reaching beyond that world-line. Until now, Way researchers have not known quite how the
alternate Ways were stacked or arranged, or indeed whether they could even be considered real. Since the Way intersects a large group of alternate world-lines—perhaps all—could there be more than one Way?
But by traveling close to the light-speed within the Way, we have answered these questions and found new ones to ask. We have distorted Way geometry in more than the requisite four dimensions; we have also contracted the fifth dimension, drawing the alternate Ways together. The Way boundaries have become transparent in a wide variety of frequencies, and we can perceive the shape of other Ways. We can select which Way we wish to inspect, using devices similar to the gate-opening clavicles. It is in observing these alternate Ways that Beryl Wallace is now occupied.
We can even see (and in some instances, communicate with) beings in other Ways.
So there are an infinite number of world-lines, and because of this one human artifact, an infinite number of connections between them. Our researchers devise schemes to allow us to cross over to other Ways, other super-sets of world-lines, but even with implants I have difficulty understanding what they are discussing.
This much I do know. There are Ways where the beings of thousands of completely different universes hold commerce, exchanging in some cases only information, in other cases actually exchanging different types of space-time. Is it possible to conceive of the potential that would exist between two universes of differing qualities? Would that potential be called energy?
Rimskaya, morose as he is, has continued working, and has even made some significant contributions to the researches. He believes he has found a definition of information: the potential that exists between all time-like dimensions (time itself, and the fifth dimension separating world-lines, for instance) and space-like dimensions. Wherever space and time interact, there is information, and where information can be ordered into knowledge, and knowledge can be applied, there is intelligence.
Lest anyone reading this journal of a primitive man should think we spend our time mired in abstractions, let me also say that I am discovering the richness available to those who are willing to alter their major characteristics. The variety of emotions available to a reconfigured human mind, thinking thoughts impossible to its ancestors. . .
The emotion of -*-, describable only as something between sexual love and the joy of intellection—making love to a thought? Or &&, the true reverse of pain, not "pleasure" but a "warning" of healing, growth and change. Or (^+^), the most complex emotion yet discovered felt by those who consciously endure the change between mind configurations, and experience the broad spectrum of possibilities inherent in thinking and being.
I have barely begun to taste the varieties of human love. Personalities are not necessarily isolated here; I can belong to a wide spectrum of personality aggregates, and yet still retain my individuality. . . . I lose nothing and gain a thousand new tastes of human affection.
What use is it to try to measure the distances we have traveled? What use is the personality of the old Pavel Mirsky to comprehend them? Soon, I firmly resolve, I will gather up my courage and join with the extended personalities in City Memory.
And yet with all this to occupy me, I still mourn. I still weep for the lost part of myself, still feel sad for a land I cannot return to, a land doubly inaccessible now. But the weeping is buried deeply, where even Talsit sessions have difficulty reaching. . . perhaps lodged in the one area it is illegal to modify, known as Mystery. How ironic, that in this way I still feel like a Russian, and that so long as any part of me exists, it will be Russian!
Because I share the same Mystery with the old Pavel Mirsky, I feel continuity. I feel. . .
An urge for the stars, yes, but more than that.
When I was a child in Kiev (or so a few dim portions of my memory inform me) I once asked my stepfather how long people would live when the Worker's Paradise was achieved. He was a computer technician, very imaginative, and he said, "Perhaps as long as they wish. Perhaps a billion years."
"How long is a billion years?" I asked him.
"It is a very long time," he said. "An age, an eternity, time enough for all life to rise and all life to end. Some people call it an eon."
In geological terms, I learned later, an aeon is indeed a billion years. But the Greeks who coined the word were not so specific. They used it as a pointer to eternity, the lifetime of a universe, far more than a billion years. It was also the personification of a god's cycle of time.
I have survived the Worker's Paradise. I have survived the end of my universe, and may survive countless others.
Dear stepfather, it looks as if I will outlive the gods themselves. . . .
A true eon.
So much to learn, and so much change to look forward to. Each day I breathe deeply, count my choices and realize how lucky we are. (If only I can convince Rimskaya! Sad man.)
I am free.
Four - Aigyptos,
Year of Alexandros 2323
Young queen Kleopatra the 21st had just spent a long and drowsy four hours listening to the complicated testimony of five ostracized congressmen from the Oxyrrhynkhos Nome's Boulē. Their complaints, her most trusted counselor decided, were without merit, so she dismissed them with a stern smile and warned them not to take their complaints outside Aigyptos, to any other polity, or they would be exiled from the Alexandrian Oikoumenē and forced to wander east or west in the lands of the barbarians, or even worse, in Latium.
Three times a week, Kleopatra received such complaints, selected from thousands of cases by her counselors, well aware they were mostly for show and had been predecided. She was not entirely happy with the limitations of royal power imposed by the Oikoumenical Boulē in the time of her fathers, but it was that or exile, and an exiled eighteen-year-old queen had few places to go outside the Oikoumenē. How things had changed in the past five hundred years!
Kleopatra looked forward to her next visitor, however. She had heard many stories about the head priestess and sophē of the Hypateion in Rrodos; the woman was legendary not only for the tale of how she had come to the Oikoumenē, but for her accomplishments in the last half-century. Yet queen and priestess had never met.
The sophē Patrikia had flown in from Rhodos two days before, landing at the Rakhotis airport just west of Alexandria and then taking up privileged residence in the Mouseion until an audience could be arranged. In those two days, the sophē had been taken on the virtually mandatory tours of the pyramidons of Alexandros and the Diadokhoi to observe (how tiresome, Kleopatra thought) the gold-wrapped mummies of the founders of the Alexandrian Oikoumenē, and then through the surrounding pyramids and tombs of the Later Successors. It was said that the sophē had borne the tours well, and some of her observations had been recorded for broadcast to the eighty-five nomes of the Oikoumenē.
Heralds arrived to announce that the sophē had come to the Lokhias Promontory and would shortly be at the royal residence. The counselors cleared the court and Kleopatra was surrounded by her flies, as she called them—her chamberlains and makeup maids, wiping sweat from her brow, powdering her cheeks and nose, arranging her robes around the golden throne. Across the courtyard, standing half in shadow and half in sun, was the phalanx of royal security. When they divided into two lines, one on each side of the portal, Kleopatra would assume her Attitude and welcome the sophē.
The lines formed and the heralds went through their wearisome rituals.
The date was Sōthis 4, old-style, Arkhimēdēs 27, new-style.
Kleopatra sat patiently on her throne, made of cedar from the troublesome hierarchy of Ioudeia, sometimes called Nea Phoenikia, sipping sparkling water from Gallia out of a cup manufactured in Metascythia. Thus in every single day she tried to utilize goods from the nomes, polities and friendly nations all around, knowing that they would feel honored and that their peoples would feel proud for serving the oldest of the old empires, the Alexandrian Oikoumenē. It would be well for the sophē to see Kleopatra fulfilling her duties, for in truth the young
queen had little else to do; the Boulē and the Council of Elected Speakers now made the truly important decisions, in the Athenian manner.
The great bronze doors of Theotokopolos swung wide and the procession began. Kleopatra ignored the rapidly swelling crowd of courtiers and chamberlains and petty politicians. Her eyes went immediately to the sophē Patrikia, entering the chamber supported on the arms of her two sons, themselves middle-aged.
The priestess wore a gown of black Chin-Ch'ing silk, simple and elegant, with a star above one breast and a moon above the other. Her hair was long, still luxuriantly thick and dark; her face appeared youthful despite her seventy-four years, her eyes black and square and penetrating. Kleopatra met those eyes with difficulty; they seemed dangerous, too provocative.
"Welcome," she said, deliberately eschewing all the ceremony. "Come sit. I am told we have things to discuss."
"Oh, yes, we do, my beautiful queen," the sophē said, stepping away from the arms of her sons and approaching the throne, one hand lifting the long hem of her gown. She was very spry, actually; no doubt she retained her sons in the temple for their own good, and not hers; the Oikoumenē was not the easiest place to find employment these days.
Patrikia sat on the pillow-covered chair, a body length below the queen's throne, and lifted her face to Kleopatra, eyes bright with excitement.
"I am also told you have brought some of your wonderful instruments, to show them to me, and reveal their purposes," Kleopatra said.
"If I may. . . ?"
"By all means."
Patrikia gestured and two Hypateion students carried up a wide, shallow wooden case. Kleopatra recognized the wood: pigeon's-eye maple from Nea Karkhedon across the broad Atlantic. She wondered how their revolution was coming along; little news leaked out from the blockaded coastal territories.
The priestess ordered the case to be set down on a wide round table of beaten brass chased with silver. "Perhaps your Imperial Hypsēlotēs knows my story. . . ?"