Eon

  “I take the responsibility,” Olmy said solemnly. ”She will be protected.”

  Yates went to inform Senator Oyu that they were about to begin.

  OLmy led them to the unfinished cupola where they had first met Ry Oyu, and picted instructions to a monitor floating nearby. ”It will summon a medical worker. I’ll make a few modifications in the worker and transfer the partials. You will then offer your Mystery and the patterns will be conformed. It’s quite simple.”

  “If it works, it’s a goddamned miracle,” Lanier said under his breath, “and you say it’s simple.”

  “‘Lazarus come forth,’ from your perspective, correct?” Olmy asked, hoping to amuse him.

  “Don’t patronize us,” Lanier said. The man’s anger was obviously building. Olmy thought he could understand why.

  Now that Patricia had made her decision, Lanier was cut out of the process. He was simply an appendage. Patricia had obviously ignored his misgivings.

  The medical worker—an upright, elongated egg-shaped device about a meter tall, delineated with purple to show where manipulators and other instruments would emerge—approached them, floating a few centimeters above the grass.

  Olmy picted modifying instructions and the worker extended a small cup-shape at the end of a thick metallic gray cable. He placed the cup below his ear and closed his eyes.

  Patricia watched, eyes wide, crossing and uncrossing the fingers of both hands. Her calmness seemed artificial now.

  Lanier’s stomach knotted.

  Prescient Oyu and her father joined them just as Olmy removed the cup.

  They said nothing, standing a few meters away to watch.

  The medical worker moved closer to Patricia. A traction field spread out into a kind of cot before it, and Olmy asked her to lie down. She complied. The worker then spread a fan of black cables around her head like a hairnet.

  The net adjusted itself, squeezing her hair. Patricia reached up to feel it. ”I should never go out in public with this thing on,” she joked.

  Lanier knelt beside the cot and took her hand. ”Just a couple of Hottentots,” he said. ”Blowing in the wind.”

  Patricia made a face, then rolled her head to look at Olmy.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “There’s no pain, no sensation whatsoever,” Olmy said.

  “Well, whatever, I’m ready. ’ She pressed Lanier’s hand and released it. He stepped back.

  The net tightened, and she winced at the pressure, not painful but strong nevertheless. Lanier winced in sympathy but did not move.

  Prescient Oyu walked to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “She carries a part of our dream,” the senator said. ”Do not worry.”

  Lanier squinted at her.

  Patricia seemed to be concentrating, her eyes barely closed.

  Lanier felt a sick kind of fascination. There was no sound, nothing overt whatsoever, simply the transfer of whatever they were borrowing from her, copying.

  She opened her eyes and turned her head toward him.

  The net withdrew.

  “I’m okay,” she said, sitting up on the field. ”I don’t feel any different.”

  “The combination will take a few hours to mature,” Olmy said. “Then Korzenowski should be with us again.”

  “Will he have a body?” Lanier asked. Patricia stood by him.

  “He’ll occupy the worker until one can be made,” Olmy said. ”He can project an image of himself, however. That would be one sign of his complete reconstruction.”

  Patricia took Lanier’s hand in hers again and squeezed it firmly.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Thanks for what, for Christ’s sake?”

  “For being brave,” she said.

  Lanier stared at her in complete amazement.

  Patricia, Lanier and Olmy followed the medical worker to the quarters where they had spent the night. Olmy judged it would be best if Korzenowski’s first perceptions were in reasonably familiar surroundings—a normal room, sparsely decorated and without too many people--or nonhumans. Ry Oyu and Yates agreed. ”Besides,” the gate opener said, “you’ve been waiting for this moment for five centuries. It’s your moment much more than ours.”

  In the quarters, they waited for fifteen minutes before Olmy prompted the worker to display an image showing the progress of the personality it contained. Patricia raised her hand to her mouth as the image manifested before them.

  The image was grossly distorted, one-half of the body large and bulbous, the other small almost to vanishing. Its apparent solidity was imperfect, with some parts opaque and others transparent. Its color was predominantly blue. The elongated, side-slipping head seemed to watch them, turning from face to face.

  “Don’t be disturbed,” Olmy warned them. ”The awareness of body shape is the last thing to mature.” Across a period of minutes, almost imperceptibly, the distortions corrected themselves. The overall blue color became more natural, and the patches of translucency filled in.

  When the adjustments were completed, Korzenowski’s image was fully and accurately formed, Olmy noted with satisfaction. It matched the appearance the Engineer had once chosen for the official portrait miniatures: a slender, dark-haired man of medium height, with a sharp, long nose and inquisitive, humored black eyes, his skin colored light coffee.

  Olmy still searched for deviations. The Mystery imposed upon the partials, however close to Korzenowski’s original, was not exact.

  However, it was sufficient to return Korzenowski to full awareness, and that awareness would be patterned by the virtually complete memories of the partials to reproduce closely the personality that had been erased—assassinated—before Olmy was born.

  “Welcome,” Olmy said aloud.

  The image regarded him steadily, then attempted to speak.

  Its lips moved, but produced no sound. The image wavered abruptly, and when it was solid again, said, “I know you. I feel much better—very different. Have I been reconstructed?”

  “As best we can manage,” Olmy said.

  “I remember so little--like bad dreams. You were a child ... when we first met.”

  Olmy felt the rise of another emotion that Ram Kikura might have regarded as atavistic. ”A boy, five years old,” he said. He clearly remembered first seeing the Engineer’s partials in the apartment memory, remembered his child-self frightened and fascinated at meeting someone famous—and dead.

  “How long have I been incomplete, dead, whatever I was?”

  “Five centuries,” Olmy said.

  The Engineer’s expletive would have been extremely crude in his day; for Olmy, now, it was archaic and quaint. ”Why was I brought back? Surely everyone was better off without me.”

  “Oh, no,” Olmy said sincerely. “We are honored to bring you back.”

  “I must be completely out of date.”

  “We can correct that in a few hours.”

  “I don’t feel ... finished. Why is that?”

  “You have to mature. Your reconstruction is still finding its pathways. You don’t have your own body. You’re occupying a medical worker.”

  Again the expletive, even stronger. ”I am behind the times. Only a mental midget could have fit into the most advanced worker...”

  The image tilted its head forward, regarding Olmy from beneath its brows, eyes questioning. ”I was damaged, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Olmy said.

  “What’s missing?”

  “The Mystery. We had to work from partials only.”

  “Whose Mystery replaced it?”

  Olmy pointed to Patricia.

  “Thank you,” Korzenowski said after a moment of thoughtful silence.

  “You’re welcome,” Patricia said lamely.

  “You look familiar ... I’ve seen you before.”

  “This is Patricia Luisa Vasquez,” Olmy said.

  Korzenowski’s expression was at first incredulous. The image extended it
s hand to Patricia. Patricia gribbed the hand, no longer surprised by the solidity and warmth of projections.

  “The Patricia Luisa Vasquez?”

  “One and only,” Patricia replied.

  Korzenowski’s image leaned its head back, grimacing. ”I have an awful lot to catch up on.” He released her hand, apologizing under his breath. He took Lanier’s outstretched hand and shook it more briefly, his grip firm but not insistent.

  Lanier was more than a little awed to meet the man who had designed the corridor. ”I have a small ... I don’t know what it is, statue, hologram, whatever, of you. Back in my desk. You’ve been a puzzle to me for years ... “ he realized he was babbling. ”We’re on Earth,” he concluded abruptly.

  Korzenowski’s face was unreadable. ”Where are we?” he asked.

  “In the Way, at one point three ex nine,” Olmy replied.

  “Where is the Thistledown?”

  “In orbit around the Earth and Moon.”

  “What year?”

  “2005,” Patricia said.

  “That’s Journey year?” Korzenowski asked hopefully.

  “Anno Domini,” Olmy said.

  The Engineer suddenly looked very tired. ”How long before you can educate me?”

  “We can start now, even before your personality is mature. Is that what you wish?”

  “I think we’d better, don’t you?” Turning to Patricia again, he said, “You’re very young. How much work have you done ... how many of your papers?”

  “None of my most important ones,” she replied.

  “This is not something I anticipated ... It is not an obvious result of our work. I mean to say, how could I have missed it? And you must tell me how you got here ... and why you?”

  Even before Olmy could arrange for the update of information, Patricia and the Engineer were deeper in discussion.

  Within four hours, the researchers, representing seven of the species that utilized the corridor, had gathered around the scaffold.

  Each of these species had demonstrated its usefulness to the human patrons, though by no means their subservience; they were full partners in the venture of the Way, and they came in a wide variety of forms--though not necessarily much wider a variety than the neomorphs of the Axis City, Lanier thought.

  There were three Frants, cloaked in the shiny foil jackets that seemed to be their usual clothing away from Tunbl. A being shaped like two upside-down U’s connected with a thick, gnarled rope of flesh—lacking visible eyes, its skin as smooth and featureless as black giass—stood unmoving on its four elephantine feet a few meters from the Frant, surrounded by a red line of quarantine. It apparently did not find the atmosphere uncomfortable, however.

  A Talsit researcher stood on its eight limbs beside Yates on the north side of the scaffold, surrounded by a traction bubble containing its particular mix of atmosphere—very little oxygen, with a much higher percentage of carbon dioxide, at temperatures low enough to make condensation form on the field’s flexible boundaries. Its mossy “antlers” were in constant motion. All the other nonhuman researchers were surrounded by similar fields, the most striking being a sinuous, snake-bodied, four-headed being suspended in coils in a levitated sphere of deep green liquid, like a preserved specimen.

  From the evidence, human-form beings were not common.

  Before the gathering, Lanier and the Talsit had engaged in a strange conversation--strange in its clarity and uncanny familiarity, as if they had been no stranger to each other than new neighbors at a block party.

  The Talsit had stood on the north side of the scaffolding, conversing with a Frant while a second Frant waited silently nearby.

  The Franks had homogenized several hours before; there was little need for the second Frant to contribute to the conversation, unless parallel thinking was required. Lanier and Patricia had eaten as much from a bountiful floating lunch table as they cared to. Patricia had then gone off with Olmy to resume her conversation with Korzenowski.

  Lanier found himself speaking with the Talsit almost by default.

  The Talsit had approached Prescient Oyu to discuss her father’s plans for the ceremony’s aftermath. Their conversation had been picted at first, and then she had shifted to English, introducing the Talsit to Lanier. The Talsit spoke perfect English, though nothing moved anywhere on its body in any way to show sound production.

  Lanier didn’t even bother to be curious; he had had a surfeit of marvels, minor and major. It took his full attention just finding the right words to explain how they had come to be here. In conversation with a being not even remotely human in shape, and of unknown psychological character (if it could speak perfect English, surely it could also provide a screen for its real thought processes), he talked casually enough about the Death, about alternate universes and invasions in space. The Talsit, in turn, discussed its own kind. Lanier found himself nodding in understanding to a story that would have been incomprehensible to him only a few short months ago.

  The beings called Talsit were offshoots of a unified biological-mechanical intelligence that had once occupied the fourteen planets of a very old solar system. At one point, the

  commingle alternate universes and timelines in a way not useful to us. We work between.” He axed the air with the edge of his hand. ”We work within a range of ten meters, and within that range, there are perhaps a billion vantages. We tune as closely as we can to the location of an object with planetary mass; the clavicle tells us the mass by picting directly to our minds, giving us all the necessary information. Feel this.” He took her hand and placed it on the opposite grip of the clavicle.

  Her mind was flooded with images, information. ”Now look at me.”

  She stared at Ry Oyu, and into her head he picted a rapid, steady flow of techniques. ”It would be much easier if you had an implant, but at least you have the inclination—and the motivation to learn. I cannot give you all the skill, but I can help you hone your intuition.”

  He delivered another series of instructions. Hand still on the clavicle, she felt the flows of data merge.

  “I can’t help you find your way home,” he said, tapping her hand to get her to remove it from the grip. ”I won’t be with you, and neither will Yates or Olmy. We all have business to attend to. But if your theory is correct—and I see no reason why it shouldn’t be—then you can find the proper gate within the geometry stack. You have sufficient knowledge for the attempt. Now watch carefully. We do not open onto another world today. We open onto the Way itself.”

  Patricia frowned.

  “You’ve seen the curve, Patricia; I’m sure you’ve calculated the curve of the Way.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Have you seen where it crosses itself?.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a very subtle crossing, and the points are far-separated. At such distances, the Way’s character may be very different.

  “The Axis City will eventually reach those sectors in its travels, perhaps in millions of years, much sooner if the Geshels carry out their present plans. When we open the gate at this junction, we will know what the Way actually is, what we have created and perhaps how extensive it is. We redeem ourselves to the Hexamon by pioneering. Now do you understand why we have stayed here?”

  Patricia nodded.

  Ry Oyu turned to the researchers and his colleagues at the base of the scaffold. ”Is the Engineer ready to witness?”

  “I am here.”

  “Can you experience everything clearly?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  The gate opener took a deep breath and glanced sidewise at Patricia.

  “Today, we are all privileged,” he said to her.

  The clavicle hummed as he stepped down onto the traction field.

  He beckoned for Patricia to accompany him. She stood on the lines beside him, and the field dimpled downward where they stood, forming a cup around them. They were within a few meters of the floor of the pit when they stopped their des
cent. Ry Oyu kneeled and replaced the clavicle in its holder. ’Tve narrowed the region down to a few centimeters,” he said.

  Lifting his head, to Patricia’s surprise he began to chant.

  “In the name of Star, furnace of our being, forge of our substance, greatest of all fires, Star give us light, give us even in darkness the gift of right creation.”

  He adjusted the clavicle and gripped it tightly with both hands, closing his eyes and lifting his face to the heights of the terminal shell. “In Fate we lay our trust, in the Way of Life and Light, in ultimate destiny’s pattern, which we cannot deny, whatever we choose, however freely we choose.

  “In the name of Pneuma, breath of our minds, wind of our thoughts, born of flesh or carried in machine, guide our hands, enthuse us, that we may create in troth ourselves, that we may manifest what is within, without.”

  Lanier saw Korzenowski’s image mouthing the words along with Ry Oyu.

  Had the Engineer written the ceremony the gate opener now used?

  The clavicle’s hum rose in pitch. Patricia clenched her hands together in front of her, realizing that she was making a gesture of prayer. She could not persuade herself to untangle her fingers and put her hands to her sides.

  “And in the name of the Eld, some of whom are with us this occasion, those born of flesh and those resurrected by the gifts of our past creativity; in the name of those who burned that we might find a truer path, who suffered the Death that we may live ...” Both Patricia and Lanier felt tears brim over and spill down their cheeks.

  “I lift this clavicle to worlds without number, and bring a new light to the Way, opening this gate that all may prosper, those who guide and are guided, who create and are created, who light the Way and bask in the light so given.”

  He brought the clavicle out of its field receptacle and lifted it between his knees. The stream of picts issuing from the clavicle lit up his face with a fire-like intensity. The humming had passed out of range of hearing.

  “Behold.”

  “I open anew worm “ The bronze surface of the Way beneath them seemed to degenerate into a crosshatching of black and green and red lines.

  Ry Oyu stood, keeping the clavicle level in his hands.