ETERNA5

[erso...@hotmail.com]

212 · GREG BEAR

Earth can't live in resentment and bitterness and envy like some
twisted
postbellum South. Maybe a larger issue like this is what we need to
spark
enthusiasm down here."

"They will not understand, Garry," Kanazawa said. "It is beyond
their experience. A fairy tale. It's the stuff myths are made of. Myths
don't play well in politics. You have to disguise them, make them seem
down-to-Earth."

Ram Kikura and Karen came back from the fence, both looking somber.
"Mortality is not the only thing that separates some of us," Kana-zawa
said in an undertone.

Dinner was served by robots. The four of them sat around the table,
Lanier and Karen and Kanazawa feeling slightly giddy with big tumblers
of rum after the day's solemnity and worry. Lanier hadn't been even
mildly drunk in decades; he found more knots loosening, and regarded
Karen with eyes of a distant, more youthful self. She was truly a
lovely
woman; however young she seemed, she had much of the wisdom of age,
and that made her even more beautiful. Lanier did not despise youth; he
was simply unwilling to let its attractions dominate him.

Working together might be a remedy, he thought; but she was still not
as warm to him as he felt toward her, and they behaved as an old
married
couple might, talking more with others at the table than between
themselves.

Ram Kikura was reluctant to try rum. "I've heard about alcohol," she
said with a voice of temperance caution. "A narcotic poison."

"Was Thistledown dry during its voyage?" Kanazawa asked, astonishment
creeping into his voice.

"No, not at first," she answered. "Though alcohol played second fiddle,
if that's still a current idiom. Or third or fourth. Early voyagers
were
more interested in direct mental stimulations, a problem we carried
with
us from Earth. The stimulations became more sophisticated, and safer,
and we found ways to treat personalities devoted to excess, chemical or
neurological. . . Alcohol was never a major worry, or a major
recreation.
Wines, if I remember, were cultivated . . ."

She seemed to enjoy a chance to talk history, especially when it
delayed
her decision on the rum. "But when the Way was built, and we had
pushed back the Jarts, trade began through the wells. Talsit and other
substances became known to us... complex intoxicants, enhancers,
augmenters, not to mention the nuances of complete downloading. Alcohol
and other chemical intoxicants were like kazoos." (she emphasized
the word, enjoying its alienness) "compared to a symphony orchestra."

ET E R N I TY · 213
"Primitive treats still have their charm, though," Kanazawa said.
"I'd hate to make a fool of myself," Ram Kikura said softly, dipping
her finger into the small glass, lifting it to her nose. "Esters and
ketones.
Very strong."
"Destroys the brain," Karen said, on the edge of being tipsy. "Might
need to rent another."
"Alcohol," Ram Kikura began, pausing, realizing she was about to be
sententious, "is still a problem on Earth. Am I right?"
"You are absolutely right," Kanazawa said. "And a balm for our manifold
wounds."
"I dislike not being .in control of myself."
Karen leaned forward. "Drink it," she said. "It actually tastes good.
You don't have to drink it all."
"I know what it tastes like. I've had biochrones in city memory."
"Biochrones?" Kanazawa asked.
"Not as popular now as they once were," Lanier said. "Simulated
full-life
experiences. Edited, usually; the more extreme remove your awareness
that they're simulated. You live another life."
"Jesus," Kanazawa said, making an astonished, strongly disapproving
face. "That's almost like being . . I know. Unfaithful to yourself."
As they discussed the ethical dilemma of whether or not sex in a
biochrone was tantamount, by older Earth standards, to cheating on
one's wedding vows, Ram Kikura brought the rum glass closer. Lanier
could see she was attracted to it; she had always felt a connection
with
the past. When they had first met, she had picted an American flag over
her shoulder, proud of her ancient ancestry; here was a bit of the past
she
knew little about, directly. Biochrone memories, he had heard, were not
nearly as vivid as real ones; they couldn't possibly be, without
extraordinary
implants, larger than practical in homorphs.
"All right," she said, steeling herself and picking up the glass. "To
being human!" She drank a much larger swallow than Lanier would have
recommended. Her e. yes widened and she spluttered, choking. Karen
pounded her back unhelpfully.
"Ah, Pneuma!" Ram Kikura croaked when she was halfway in control
again. "My body hates it!"
"Go slow," Kanazawa recommended. "If that's too strong, I have
some wine . . ."
Ram Kikura waved away their attentions, embarrassed by her ineptitude.
She wiped away tears and lifted the glass again. "What were the
toasts?" she asked, still slightly hoarse.
"Down the hatch," Lanier suggested.

314 · GREG BEAR

Ram Kikura sipped more moderately. "Makes my throat close up."
"I don't understand," Kanazawa said. "It's very good rum, Oahu's
best."
"At least three hours old," Lanier said. Kanazawa gave him a twinkling
look of senatorial disapproval.
"From my district," he said.
"This half of the world is your district. Surely you don't drink
everything
bottled by your constituents!" Karen said.
Ram Kikura sat quiet for a moment, contemplating the effect. "I don't
think I'll become drunk," she said. "My implant metabolizers are con-
vetting the alcohol to sugars faster than I can drink."
"What a pity," Kanazawa said.
"I could fine-tune them . . . if I will fit into the occasion less so-

Kanazawa glanced meaningfully at Lanier. Karen sighed. "You are
not a natural party girl, my dear," she said.

The night sky of Hawaii was a cold blaze, reminding Lanier of Van
Gogh's Starry Night. Kanazawa brought a low-powered red laser pointer
onto the back lawn. They sat on the grass, eating Brazilian chocolates
and sipping aperitifs.
"This is my private planetarium," the senator said, crouching
carefully,
kicking out one foot, almost falling over, then settling back on his
butt and crossing his legs. "Nothing comparable to actually being up in
space, I suppose .... But I'm happy with it."
He switched on the laser and lifted it. In the moist sea air, the beam
cut a straight glowing path hundreds of feet up to the stars, seeming
to
touch them individually. "I know all the constellations," he said, "the
Japanese and Chinese and the Western. Even some of the Babylonian."
"It's beautiful," Ram Kikura said. She had allowed more than a little
of the alcohol to have an effect on her; her eyes were half-lidded and
she
seemed relaxed, almost sleepy. "The sky is more . . . human down
here. More friendly."
"Yes, I see that," Karen said. She and Lanier sat back to back on the
grass, heads touching. "But when I was a girl, it still seemed immense.
Frightening."
"Yes, I see that," Ram Kikura said, imitating Karen's tone and smiling
broadly. "I really do."
"My own planetarium," Kanazawa repeated. "I can just point the
laser and move the beam and watch and nobody knows or cares. Their
problems--" He flicked the beam across the entire sky, from cloud-dark-

ET E R N ITY · 215

ened horizon to clear open sea, "---are not my problems." He sighed
over-dramatically. "It is good to see you again, Garry, Karen. And it
is
good to meet someone from the precincts on less than formal terms. We
have such distance between us, for being parents and children . . ."
"Who are the parents," Karen asked, "and who the children?"
"You are the parents," Ram Kikura said.
"And the children, too." Karen bumped her head gently against
Lanier's, and then harder, as if to attract his attention.
"Ow," he said. "What?"
"Just bumping, you old son of a bitch." She giggled. "Sorry. Rum
talk."
"Keep bumping," he said.
Ram Kikura held her hands up. "I would love to see crowds of Earth
children now. Healthy children, happy children. I love to watch
Hex-amon
children through my apartment window, in Axis Euclid. You've
never had more children, Karen . . . Why?"
"Much too busy," Karen said. She bit her lower lip.
"How can anyone be too busy to have children?"
"Naturally, or the Hexamon way?" Karen asked. The pain had been
blunted by time but she still shied from the center.
"The Hexamon way, I think," Ram Kikura said. "My son Tapi is an
old-fashioned child." She smiled and shook her head. "He will pass his
incarnation exams. He will follow in his father's footsteps . . .
Olmy's,'
she added.
"I never knew you had a son," Lanier said.
"Oh, yes. I'm very proud of him. But I did not give birth to him in the
very old sense. To have children is important, though, however you have
them.., whether or not they are raised first in city memory. Allowed
to grow like flowers, to make mistakes."
"And to die," Lanier mused, his eyes closed. Karen stiffened and
leaned forward, breaking their back-to-back contact, and he instantly
regretted his words.
"There are graveyards on Thistledown," he said defensively, avoiding
Ram Kikura's steady gaze. "I've seen them. Columbaria, even pretentious
tombs. Your people once knew what death was like."
"Death is failure," Ram Kikura said, her tone angry.
"Death is completion," Lanier said.
"Death is a waste and a loss."
"I'll go along with that," Karen said, bumping him again pointedly,
"More life."

215 · GREG BEAR

"Robert!" Lanier pointed a finger at him. In exchange, Kanazawa

pointed the laser beam's arrow on his chest.

"Garry! What?"

"You decide. You're a natural man. No implants, nothing but radiation
therapy--you've even kept your scar--"

"White badge of courage," Kanazawa said. "Helps me stay in office."
"Is death completion or waste?"

"We're far from the subject of the evening, aren't we?" Kanazawa
asked.

"You have Japanese ancestry. They look upon death in a different way.
Honorable death. Death at the right time."

"Do you have Amerindian blood?" Kanazawa asked him.

"No."

"Well, you look as if you might. When people have to die, they look
upon death differently. They dress it up and dance with it and put it
in
black robes and fear it. I have many disagreements with the Hexamon,
but I do not regret their giving us the choice. Those grave most are
from the years just after the Death. Most of my constituents have
chosen
to live longer. Some hope to live forever. Perhaps they will. Death is
not

failure, it may even be completion, but only so long as it is not
master."
"Right," Karen said.

"Have you chosen to live forever?" Lanier asked.
"No," Kanazawa said.
,,Why?,,

"That is personal."

"Sorry," Karen said. "This is not a pleasant subject . . ."

"No. It is important," Kanazawa said. "Not too personal to talk
about. Rum talk, even. I cannot forget certain things. Unpleasant
memories.
I cannot use Talsit or pseudo-Talsit, even if we could get them,
wonderful as those treatments are; these memories are a fixed part of
me,
and have made me what I am now. I fight with them always. In the
morning I wake to them. Sometimes they hang over my whole day. You

know what I'm talking about, don't you, Garry?"

"Amen," Lanier said.

"When I die, those memories will be gone. I will be gone, and perhaps
someone better will come in my place. He may have knowledge of the
history I've lived through, but he will be able to lift above them.
There

will be no waste. What I cannot assimilate, he or she will."

"Amen," Lanier repeated in a whisper.

"We will agree to disagree," Ram Kikura said. "You are a wonderful
man, Senator. Your death would be a loss."

ETERNITY · 217

Kanazawa tilted his head to acknowledge her compliment.
"We cannot cry, you know," Ram Kikura said. "We feel many of the
same emotions, but we have.., not risen above them. Transcended
them. We assimilate and remain ourselves, but . . ." She shook her head
vigorously. "I can't think straight! Rum thought, rum talk."
"We are too close to a lot of death to look at individual death
objectively,''
Kanazawa said. "Karen, do you approve of your husband's age?"
"No," she said after a long pause.
"I can't keep up with her," Lanier said, trying for a pleasantry.
She looked down from the stars at the dark grass. "It's not that. I
don't
want to lose you. I don't want to sacrifice myself to stay in step with
you,
either."
"Lance that boil, doctor," Lanier said.
"Shut up." She pushed away from him again and stood up. "We're
talking stupid talk now."
"Rum talk," Kanazawa said, swinging the beam across the sky again. "In
vino, veritas. "
"This is noble," Ram Kikura said. "This is human."
Karen ran for the house. Lanier stood, brushed grass from his pants,
and said, "I think I'm going to follow her and then we'll go to sleep."
Kanazawa nodded sagely.
Lanier walked back to the house, found the bedroom, and stood in the
doorway, watching Karen undress. "I remember the first time you made
love to me," he said. "In the jumpjet. On the tuberider."
She made a little noise, unhitching her bra.
"It took me many years to really appreciate you. Not until after we
were married. After we had worked together."
"Please shut up," Karen said, but not angrily.
"You became like one of my arms, one of my legs," he pursued. "I
took you for granted. I thought everything I'd do, you'd do. I loved
you
so much I forgot you weren't me."
"There was work to. do."
"No excuse, even so," he said. "I think you lost sight of me, too."
"You're not the only one with bad memories," Karen said sharply. "I
went back to Hunan. Remember? I saw my town, the farmlands. I
smelled death, Garry, waste. Skeletons of infants by the roadside, you
couldn't tell whether they had been there for months or years, from the
Death or after, when their parents dropped them there because they
couldn't feed them. We couldn't get to everybody in time. You are not
the
only one with memoriesl"
"I know," Lanier said, still leaning on the door frame.

218 · GREG BEAR

"I can handle them. I can love you for a lot longer. I don't want you
to

go away from me. I hate that thought."

"I know."

"Then come back to me," she said. "You can still become young.
There are centuries left to us. Centuries of work yet to do."

"That's not my way," he said. "I wish you could accept that."
"I wish you could accept my . fears," she said.
"I'll try. We're working together now, Karen."

She half-shivered, half-shrugged and sat on the bed. He remained
standing by the door, still dressed. "What about Mirsky?" she asked.
There was a look of patent wonder on her face, forehead smooth, eyes
wide, lips drawn down as if in a pout. "Is he going to bring the gods
~down on us? Is that what he's really saying? He's a horrible thing,
Garry."

"I don't think so."

She shook her head. "A nightmare."

"A vision," Lanier countered. "Let's wait and see."

"I am afraid," she said simply. "Will you allow me that?"

If he came forward now, he knew, and tried to hug her, she would not
accept; she would push him away. But he could see that the time might
come, and for now, still mildly buzzing with rum, that was enough. "Of
course," he said.

"I'm going to sleep." She lay back on the guest bed and pulled the
covers up.

He watched her for a moment, then shut out the light, turned, and
stood alone in the dark and quiet hallway. Out on the grass, he heard
Kanazawa and Ram Kikura talking.

"I would be honored if you would share my bed with me this evening,"
Kanazawa said.

"I'm not even mildly drunk now, Ser Kanazawa," Ram Kikura said.
"Nor am I."

Ram Kikura said nothing for a moment. Then, "I'd like that."
Lanier contemplated his wife in bed, the quaint comfort of the guest
room, and shook his head. Still too many walls between them. He walked
to the front porch and lay down on the padded wicker sofa there,
plumping
an old tattered silk pillow under his head.

In the morning, Lanier walked along the beach before Karen awoke. A
kilometer away, he spotted Ram Kikura, walking around a tongue of
exhausted surf, tall and slender, surrounded by wheeling gulls. Without

E T E R N ITY · 219

gesture, they walked toward each other, and Ram Kikura smiled at him
as they closed.
"Am I a brazen hussy?" she asked, turning to match his pace and
direction.
Lanier returned her smile. "As brazen as they come," he said.
"In all my years as Earth's advocate, I've never made love to an Old
Native," she said.
"Was it quaint?" Lanier asked. She scowled at him.
"Some things stay remarkably the same, in basics," she said. They
walked on in silence for a while, watching gulls prance on the wet sand
ahead of them, avoiding the slick rising curves of water. "Ser Kanazawa
is furious," she finally said. "He's angrier than I've seen any man in
a
very long time. He didn't show it to all of us . . . He's going to call
a
meeting of all of Earth's senators and corpreps. Through me, they'll
challenge the mens publica vote. I can make a strong argument that the
Recovery laws cannot apply in this case."
"Will you win?" Lanier asked.
She bent down to pick up a glass Japanese float. "I wonder how long
this has been here?" she asked. "Do they make these now?"
"I don't know," Lanier said. "I suppose they do. Will you win?"
"Probably not," she said. "The Hexamon isn't what it used to be." She
held the float up close, examining its tiny starlike bubbles floating
in
green glass. She returned the float to the sand.
"The president seems to be swinging with the tide," Lanier said. "He
claimed he violently opposes reopening."
"He does. But there's not much he can do if the Nexus supports it.
And I fear that like the captain of a troubled ship, he won't hesitate
to
cut the Earth loose, if it's necessary to save what's left of the
Hexamon.'
"But the Jarts "
"We beat them back once, and we weren't prepared for them," Ram
Kikura said.
"You sound proud, almost supportive," Lanier said.
She frowned again, shaking her head. "An advocate needs to understand
how the opposition feels. I'm as furious as Kanazawa, myself." She
swung her arms and bent to pick up a crumbling piece of plastic bottle.
"How old is this, do you think?"
Lanier didn't answer. He was thinking of Mirsky, surprised by the
refusal of the Nexus to go along with his request. "What chance is
there
for a negative vote?" he asked.
"None," she said. "Without a persuaded and informed Earth, and that
seems to be an impossibility in the near term."

220 · GREG BEAR

"Then why are we here? I thought this was a good idea . . . I thought
we might have an effect."
Ram Kikura nodded. "We will," she said. "We'll hang on their
damned heels and slow them down. The tide is coming in, don't you
think?"
The tide was going out, as far as Lanier could tell, but he understood
her meaning.
"What will we say in Oregon?" he asked.
"The same thing we've said here."
They turned around to walk back toward the house. When they arrived,
the others were up and about, and the robots were serving breakfast.
Kanazawa and Ram Kikura were friendly, cordial and no more.
Lanier was thoughtful. He had had a burst of youthful enthusiasm
shot down. There was chagrin, but there was also the realization he
could
still be young and foolish. He could still fight for hopeless causes.
Somehow,
that made him feel even more alive, even more resolved.
Besides, he suspected Mirsky or the beings at the end of time---were
far more resourceful than even the Hexamon.
They packed their few pieces of luggage. Ram Kikura and Karen
spoke with Kanazawa as Lanier carried the small bags to the shuttle. As
he entered the shuttle doorway, the automated pilot flashed a red pict
before his eyes.
"Speak in English, please," Lanier said, vaguely irritated.
"Our flight has been held," the pilot said. "We are to stay here until
precinct police arrive."
Lanier set the bags down, stunned. "Precinct police? Not terrestrial
police?"
The pilot did not respond. The interior lighting dimmed. The white
interior relaxed and turned an inactive blue.
"Are you still functioning?" Lanier said. There were no further
answers.
He looked around the darkened interior, opening and closing his
fists. He stepped down from the doorway, face red with anger, and
confronted
Karen.
"I think we're being intercepted," he said. Ram Kikura and Kanazawa
came from the house.
"Problems?" the senator asked.
"Precinct police are coming," Lanier asked.
Kanazawa's face hardened. "Not if I have anything to say about it."
"You probably don't," Ram Kikura said. Kanazawa stared at her as if
she had struck him. "This is very serious, Garry. How did you--"
Karen looked out to sea. Beyond Barber's Point, three aircraft flew

ETERNITY · 221

toward them, sharp white against the billowing gray midmorning
clouds. They banked and approached the house, slowing and hovering,
their flight fields knocking bits of gravel and dirt from the senator's
driveway and yard.
"Ser Lanier," a voice from the craft boomed above them. "Please
respond.''
"I'm Garry Lanier." He stood away from the others.
"Ser Lanier, you and your wife are to return to New Zealand
immediately.
All Old Natives are being returned to their homelands."
Ram Kikura stepped out beside him. "Under whose orders, and by
what law?" She lowered her voice. "There are no such laws," she
muttered.
"By Revised Recovery Act. Direct presidential authority. Please board
your shuttle. Its flight plans have been changed."
"Don't go," Kanazawa said. He lifted his eyes to the three craft and
raised a fist. "I am a senator! I demand a meeting with the president
and
the presiding minister!"
The hovering craft did not reply.
"You won't board the shuttle," Ram Kikura said. "We'll all stay here.
They won't dare use physical force."
"Garry, they said all Old Natives were being returned--even those
with permanent residency on the orbiting bodies?" Karen's face
resembled
a child's, horribly disappointed, disbelieving.
"I don't know," Lanier said. "Senator, we can do more in our own
territory . . unless we're under house arrest, in which case it doesn't
matter where we are." He turned to Ram Kikura. "I assume you'll go
back to Thistledown."
"Assume nothing," she said tightly. "All rules are off. I certainly
didn't expect this."
"They do this," Karen said, her face red, "and they'll really have a
fight on their hands."'
I doubt that, Lanier thought. The fight is probably over right here and
now. They feel the need to play dirty.
The three craft held their position, implacable. A light sun shower
began to fall. Ram Kikura wiped wet hair from her face. "We shouldn't
just stand here like disobedient children," Lanier said. "Senator,
thank
you for listening to us. If we can talk again, I'll--"
"Please board your shuttle now," the voice boomed.
Lanier took his wife's hand. "Good-by," he said to Kanazawa and

222 · GREG BEAR

Ram Kikura. "Oood luck. Let Korzenowski and Olmy know what happened
here."
Ram Kikura nodded.
They boarded the shuttle and the door flowed shut behind them.

FORTY-THREE

The Way, Efficient Gaia

A maze of brilliant green lines sketched themselves in parallel around
them, breaking pattern to draw a harness or cage about the bubble
faster
than Rhita could move her eyes to follow. After a brief pause, another
array of lines rose from the surface of the Way, far below, originating
at a
single dazzling vertex near one of the stacked disk towers. The lines
connected and the oval bubble descended with alarming rapidity, though
again with no sensation.
Rhita felt faint. There was too much stimulation, too much to absorb.
"I'm going to be sick," she told T~ph0n. The escort took hold of her
left
arm--the first time he had touched her. His touch was warm but
unconvincing;
through her constricting circle of thought and vision, she was
faintly repelled. Then she was on her knees and past caring.
She haft-expected T~phOn to do something to her, to fix her and banish
the spell of dizziness. But he simply stood behind her, keeping her
from
falling on her back. For a moment, she restrained an impulse to heave,
and then shut her eyes tightly, deciding darkness would be better for
her
health.
After a time, the dizziness faded and she felt better. "if you are
thirsty," T~ph0n said, "drink this." She opened her eyes and saw a
glass
cup of clear liquid in his hand. She took it and sipped cautiously.
Water;
nothing more, as far as she could tell. This disappointed her. She had
expected some elixir. Of course, where the escort had found a cup of
water in the bubble was a puzzle .... She imagined him opening a hole
in his body and drawing it out, or perhaps spitting into the glass. She
shut her eyes again, fighting another rising plume of nausea.
Rhita used the railing to regain her feet, waving off his hand, and

ETERNITY · 223

hastily returned the half-full cup. Partly to distract herself from the
panorama
outside, partly to subdue her queasiness, she directed her full
attention to what he did with the glass.
He held it. Nothing more. Shivering, she turned back to the view. They
had dropped much closer to the surface now, and flewmguided by the
green lines toward a white tower. Trying to judge scale, she decided
the
tower was at least as tall as the Pharos at Alexandreia, and much more
massive. But the scale of the Way dwarfed all structures.
Rhita forced herself to lean her head back and look up. Her neck
protested. Her lips parted and she sighed, despite herself. Far behind
and
above them, the triangular prism hung huge and blunt and graceless in
the center of the pearly ribbon of light, like a long black crystal
suspended
in milky water.
Something much farther down the throat of the Way, a blinking beacon,
caught her attention. She shielded her eyes, although the tubelight
was not excessively bright, and squinted to focus on a moving speck.
It,
too, was within the ribbon of light, but many stadia away, moving
rapidly
in their direction. She jerked her neck back as it reached a point just
above them, saw that it was another huge rainbow prism, and realized it
would collide with the first prism. Twisting about, she gasped as the
prisms struck like trains on a rail. For a moment, they were one long
green mass, and then the second prism passed through the first without
damage to either, continuing its travel unimpaired in the opposite
direction.
Patrikia had never described anything like that.
"I feel numb," she said, glancing resentfully at T~rph6n.
"It was your choice to see it all," the escort said mildly. "None of me
take this route often, themselves."
She pondered that syntax for a moment, decided the view was less
disturbing than what she suspected T~ph6n meant, and faced forward
again.
There were no obvious entrances to the tower. Nevertheless, the bubble
passed straight th/~ough the rounded wall of a stacked disk, crossing
an enclosed arc-shaped space filled with floating polyhedrons, and then
through another wall. The bubble discarded its panoply of green lines,
and descended along a leaf-green shaft toward what might have been a
perfectly clear lens of glass. Distorted by the lens were sea-blues and
sky-blues
and light browns and cloud-grays; all the normal colors of her
home. She held her breath for a moment, hoping against hope that the
nightmare would end.
"This is the gate to Gaia," her escort said. "A prior gate was opened

224 · GREG BEAR

here. Our gates are not usually so constricted in shape, but the prior
geometry takes precedence."

"Oh," Rhita said. Free with information that meant next to nothing to
her.

As they fell toward the surface of the lens, the color of the shaft
reddened, then abruptly shifted to white.

The bubble struck the lens and they fell through. Below lay a
coastline,
gray ocean under cloud shadows, blue ocean in patches of brilliant
sunlight.

Rhita could hardly breathe. "Where are we?"

"This is your world," T~phtn said.

She knew that; and it was no dream, either. "Where on Gaia?"

"Not far from your home, I understand--I've never visited here in any
self or capacity."

"I want to go to . . ." She looked up and saw blue sky and an
indistinct
shimmer over their heads: the gate they had just passed through.
"Can we go to Rhodos?"

T~)phtn considered her request for a moment. "It would not consume
much more energy. This project nears its limits, however. There will
have
to be results soon."

"I don't know what you mean."

"This line of investigation. You must provide results soon."

"You know everything I know," Rhita said, near tears, utterly
exhausted.
"What can I do for you?"

"Lead us to those who built your clavicle. Give us clues. But--" He
held up his hand as she was about to protest, "I realize you do not
know
these things. Still, there is some hope you can reveal more by your
actions,
or by your presence the clavicle may be sought by others than
ourselves. Only you can operate it. You still have some value in your
active form."

"What about my . . . companions?"

"They will be brought here if it makes you more comfortable."

"It would," she said. "Please."

TgphOn smiled. "Your forms of social appeasement are wonderful.
Such simplicity masking such aggression. The request is made; they

should meet us at Rhodos, if we do not exceed the energy budget."
"I'm not sure I can stand here much longer. I'm very tired."

T~phtn encouraged her to squat on the platform. "You will not be
clumsy in my eyes," he said.

With a grimace, she not only squatted; she lay down on her stomach,
peering over the edge. "Are we going to Rhodos?" she asked.

ETERNITY · 225

A green line appeared from nearby clouds and spread out before the
bubble into a radiance of grasping curves. In a cage again, the bubble
transported them high above the ocean. She could not tell in which
direction
of the compass they were heading.
"Am I the first human you've ever studied?" she asked.
"No," Tgph0n answered. "My selves studied dozens of humans from
this world before investigating your preserved record."
"Do you know everything about us?" Anger was her dominant emotion
now; she bit off her words, hoping the sour edge was not lost to the
escort.
"No. You still have many subtleties, many things to study. But I may
not be allowed to study you to completion. There are higher tasks, and
my number of selves is fully occupied."
"You keep saying that," Rhita said wearily. "My 'selves.' I don't
understand
what you mean."
"I am not an individual, I am actively stored--"
"Like grain in a barrel?" Rhita asked sarcastically.
"Like a memory in your own head," T~phOn said. "I am actively
stored in the flaw. We can induce resonances in the flaw and store huge
amounts of information literally worlds of information. Is that clear
to
you?"
"No," she admitted. "How can there be more than one of you?"
"Because my patterns, my self, can be duplicated endlessly. I can be
merged with other selves of differing designs and abilities. Various
effectuators
can be built for us--machines or ships or more rarely, bodies. I
do work when any of my selves are required."
"You're trained to take care of strangers?"
"In a sense. I made a study of beings similar to you when we fought
with them in the Way. I was an individual then biologically based, in
shape similar to my original birthform."
Her grandmother had told her what little she knew about the Jart
Wars. To a young girl, they had not meant muchmmeaningless wonders
in a weave of fantastic stories. She wished she had listened more
closely.
"What was your original birth-form?"
"Not human, not this shape at all."
"But you did have your own shape once."
"No. Part of me did. I have since been combined with others, stirred
together." He twirled an extended finger slowly. Rhita frowned at him
over her shoulder..4ll my questions keep me from the truth I'll have to
face.

226 · GREG BEAR

"i'm confused again," she said. "You te]] me one thing, then another."

T~ph0n knelt beside her, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. A very
human gesture. Was his face gaining more character?

"Your language doesn't have the right word-groups. All sound-carried
language is inadequate."

"You don't talk to each other," she said.

"Not in words, or using sounds. Not usually, at any rate."

"Would you kill me if you were ordered to?"

"I will not be ordered to kill you or anybody, if by that you mean
destroy your patterns. That is what you would call a crime, a sin."

Enough for the moment. She rolled back on her stomach. Below them,
the ocean stretched blue-green, shallow, with pillars of rock sticking
up
like stumps of trees. She did not know this place.

Yet they were supposed to be near Rhodos. "Near" might mean different
things to a Jart; they could speed down the Way and exit through
gates in soap bubbles, after all.

More pillars appeared. Each was covered by a cap of gold that took the
shape of the rocks, as if painted on. No vegetation, no boats in the
water,

just this cloud-shadowed and pillar-specked barrenness.
"Could I smell the air?" she asked.
"No," T~ph0n said bluntly.
"Why not?"

"It is no longer healthy for you. There are organisms and biological
machines on your world now that travel by air, too small to see. They
are

raising Gaia to a higher level of efficiency."

"Nobody can live out there?"

T~ph6n seemed to commiserate. "Not of your kind," he said.

She felt weak again. They had spread disease around Gaia--was that

what the escort meant? Death and defilement. Nobody could
live''Anywhere?
Can people live anywhere?"

"There are no humans on Gaia. They have been stored for further
study."

Now the hatred came. It jerked her head back, squeezing her vitals like
a giant hand, pushing a scream out. She turned on T~ph6n with fists
raised. He made no effort to defend himself. She hit him as hard as she
could, again and again, not weak feminine blows; she had never been
raised to fear defending herself. Her fists deformed his face and her
knees
kicked dimples in his clothing. She seemed to be striking bread dough,
warm and yielding. She continued to scream, pitching higher with each
blow, grunting, saliva falling from her lips, eyes half-closed. Again
and

ETERNITY · 227
again. Striking, kicking, grabbing him by the neck and sticking her
fingers
into what might be flesh.
Tgph6n collapsed on the platform, face misshapen, eyes beaten shut,
not bruised but simply warped, and she kicked him several more times
until she felt a sparkling dark emptiness in her head. Staring up at
the
clouds outside the bubble, tears slick on her cheeks, her chin damp
with
spit, the rage gone but the legs and arms still trembling, Rhita began
to
creep back into control.
She glanced down at the clothed mass that no longer seemed very
human, her expression that of a panicked horse, pupils like pinpricks
and
nostrils wide, then grabbed the railing, feeling again as if she might
vomit. Across the barren sea, she saw a low dark green outline above
the
horizon and the last hopeful part of her exulted. That was Rhodos; she
would know it anywhere. The bubble was still speeding her toward home.
T.gph6n spoke behind her, voice undistorted by the injuries she had
inflicted. "I may be exceeding my budget now," he said.

FORTY-FOUR
Thistledown City

President Farren Siliom entered the full Nexus chamber and proceeded
to the podium. Olmy sat beside Korzenowski and Mirsky. They listened
to his speech intently. Korzenowski's expression was enigmatic; he knew
the importance of this occasion as well as anybody in the chamber, but
he
expressed neither approval nor disapproval.
Mirsky's face was algo bland, but in its blandness, Olmy thought, there
might lie more threat to the Hexamon than ever posed by the Jarts. Olmy
had come to accept Mirsky's story completely, and now even judged the
man if he was a manmincapable of lying. The president doubtless
agreed; Garabedian's confirmation had weighed heavily in that judgment.
Yet now the Nexus.. and Farren Siliom, for irresistible political
reasons
--were committing themselves to a course of re-opening. They were
committing
political acts that could only serve to slice a gap between Earth
and the orbiting bodies that might never heal.

338 · GREG BEAR

All native Terrestrials were being returned to the Earth, whatever
their
status on the orbiting bodies. The Hexamon was entering a period of
Emergency. Under Emergency Laws forgotten since the Jart Wars, the
president was assuming extraordinary powers. He now had one year in
which to carry out his plans; after that time, because of his use of
the
Emergency Laws, he would be forbidden from ever holding political
of-flee
again.
He was guaranteeing the purity of the vote of the mens publica with a
vengeance. If the vote was negative, he would resign. If it was
positive,
Thistledown's sixth chamber could be refurbished, the Hexamon defense
reestablished and the Way reopened within four months.
Korzenowski had been formally ordered to see to the execution of the
will of the mens publica. He could not refuse. To Olmy, he seemed
resigned;
perhaps more than resigned. Having been forced this far, Korzenowski
might be shedding the last vestiges of the mask he had worn for
four decades, a mask of interest only in the Recovered Earth and the
Terrestrial Hexamon, the denial of all his genius and accomplishment
for
the greater good of his fellows . . .
Shedding, or having the mask ripped from him, it might not matter
which in the long run.
Olmy had few doubts Korzenowski would carry out the Hexamon's
orders efficiently. The Way might be opened sooner even than the
president
expected.
What Mirsky would do, he could not tell. Best not to worry about
imponderables.
Meanwhile, within Olmy himself, the Jart was revealing layer upon
layer of everyday Jart life. The flow of information had turned into a
true
flood, perhaps a rupture.
Thus far, he was managing to keep up with the tide. Already he was
planning his briefing for the reorganized defense forces.
Soon, following an agreement worked out between the Jart mentality
and his partial, he would allow the Jart access to his eyes and ears.
They
could communicate more effectively if they understood each other
better.
There were some dangers in that, of course, but none worse than what
he had already survived.
It was more than a time of changes.
The pace had now taken the proportions of revolution. The Sundering
was about to be reversed.
The president finished his presentation, and the dominant coalition of
neo-Geshels applauded and picted complete approval. The president's
Naderite colleagues kept silent.

ETERNITY ·

Korzenowski turned to Mirsky. "My friend, I must do this work,
whatever my beliefs."
Mirsky shrugged and nodded, as if either forgiving or dismissing the
Engineer. "Things will work out," he said with bland nonchalance. He
glanced at Olmy and winked.

FORTY-FIVE

Thistle.down, the Orbiting
Precincts, and Earth

Korzenowski lifted a lump of white dough and listened to its soft hiss
in
his hands. The lumps were remains of a failed attempt six years before
to
create a gate without the Way; the failure had been quiet, but
decisive.
Instead of creating a gate, he had created a new form of matter, quite
inert, possessing no useful properties that he had found, so far. And
he
had spent the past six years searching .
He laid the lump back in its pallet of black stone and straightened,
surveying his laboratory, saying farewell. He would not be back for
months, perhaps not ever.
The results of the Hexamon mens publica vote had been tabulated and
broadcast. By a two-thirds majoritymmore than he had expectedmpermanent
re-opening had been mandated.
Farren Siliom had no choice at all now.
Korzenowski activated the robot sentries and gave final instructions to
a partial. Should he not return, and should anyone come visiting, the
partial would be there to greet them.
He was not reluctant to return to the sixth chamber and begin the
refurbishing; in fact, he was eager. There was a small and persistent
voice
in him that either echoed or perhaps, in some way not clear, created
that
eagerness: the unquiet voice of that which integrated his reassembled
self,
the mystery of Patricia Luisa VasqUez.
Korzenowski gathered up his small tools and journals, all that was
neces~ry to begin work on the Way, and ordered the laboratory sealed.

230 · GREG BEAR

"Be good, now," he instructed a cross-shaped sentry as he walked away
from the domes. He paused at the boundary of the compound, frowning.
It was certainly not in his character to address a remote; he treated
them
for what they were, useful machines.

Surrounded by kilometer after kilometer of scrub and sand, the Engineer
boarded the tractor that would take him to the train station in the
second chamber city.

Suli Ram Kikura's partial argued persuasively that its original should
be released from house arrest in Axis Euclid. The partial's appeal was
rejected by the City Memory auxiliary courts on the grounds that under
Emergency Laws, all appeals had to be presented by corporeals. This was
so ridiculous it did not even anger her; she was beyond anger, moving
into sadness.

In her apartment, Ram Kikura had known the partial would fail. This
new Hexamon was not above making up the rules as it went along. To
openly object to the re-opening was not so much dangerous now as it was
extremely awkward, impolite in its extended sense of impolitic. For
decades,
Hexamon law and politics had been based upon awareness of
boundaries beyond which lay chaos and disaster; the president and
presiding
minister, having accurately gauged the true spirit of the orbiting
bodies, were now doing everything within their power to stay within the
boundaries of their duty, yet also carry out the vote of the mens
publica
and the advisory of the Nexus. They also seemed grimly determined to
demonstrate the extremes of this mandate, as if they wished to punish
the
Hexamon even their ideological partners for this onerous duty.

She was not allowed access to any city memory; that meant she could
not speak with Tapi, who would be born any hour now. She had not been
allowed to speak with either Korzenowski or Olmy. They were on their
best behavior, she had been told, and were cooperating fully with the
Emergency Effort.

She had refused any form of cooperation. Ram Kikura had her own
boundaries, and she was damned if she would step over them.

In New Zealand, spring brought lovely weather and the amusement of
lambs. Lanier tended their small flock of black-faced sheep; Karen
helped
when she wasn't lost in her own funk. Unable to work, confined to their
home and valley, she was not doing well.

They worked together, yet kept their distance. Lanier had lost whatever
enthusiasm Mirsky had kindled. He did not know what would happen
next. He didn't much care.

ETERNITY · 231

In his way, he had once adored the Hexamon, and all it had stood for.
Over the past few years, he had seen from a distance the changing
character
of the orbiting precincts, the shifting sands of Hexamon politics.
Now, lost in its own needs and regrets, the same Hexamon that had
worked to save the Earth had finally betrayed him, and betrayed Karen

·
. had betrayed Earth.
Earth's Recovery was not yet finished.
Perhaps now, it would never be done, whatever the assurances broadcast
around the world nightly from the orbiting bodies. He found these
particularly galling; smooth, pleasant, informative, day by day
educating
the Earth about progress in the reopening.
Now and then, Lanier heard of Recovery efforts continuing in a
desultory
fashion.
He felt old again, looked older.
Sitting on their porch at night, he listened to cool night breezes
wafting
through the bushes, thinking thoughts convoluted and fuzzy as balls of
yarn.
I am only a single human being, he told himself. It is right that I
should
~vither like a leaf on a tree. I am out of place now. I am finished. I
hate
this time, and I do not envy those being borr~
Perhaps the worst part of it all was that for a brief moment, he had
felt
the old spark again. With Mirsky, he had thought of fighting the good
fight; he had hoped perhaps here was an agency more powerful and wise
than all of them.
But Mirsky was gone.
Nobody had seen him in months·
Lanier tried to get up out of his seat, to go to bed and sleep and for
a
short time lose all these painful thoughts. His hands pushed on the
wood,
and his back moved forward, but he could not lift himself; his pants
seemed stuck to something. Puzzled, he leaned over one side of his
chair.
Silently, something exploded. A ball of darkness edged in from one side
of his eyes and his head became enormous.
The ball of darkness centered and became a great tunnel. He grabbed
the ends of his chair arms but could not straighten·
"Oh, God," he said. His lips were numb as rubber. Ink spread in the
back of his head. Doors closed with rhythmic slammings on all his
memories.
Karen not with him; not where she was. This was the way his
father had gone, younger even than he was now. No pain just the sudden
withdrawal of He had not thought himself so "Oh, God."
The tunnel yawned wide, full of rainbow night.

233 · GREG BEAR

FORTY-SIX

Thistledown

Buried sixty meters within the outer perimeter of the seventh chamber's
southern cap were seven generators, connected by seven field-lined
shafts
of pure vacuum to the sixth chamber machinery. The generators had no
moving pans and nothing to do with electrons or magnetic fields; they
worked on far more subtle principles, principles developed by
Korzenow-ski
based on mathematical reasoning that had primarily begun with Pa-tricia
Luisa Vasquez in the late twentieth century.

These seven generators had created the stresses on spacetime that had
resulted in the Way. They had not been used for four decades but were
still sound; the vacuum shafts were still operating and completely free
of
matter or time-linked energy, that enigmatic byproduct of interaction
between universes.

In the hole leading to the seventh chamber, an observation blister had
been erected and the bore hole pressurized with air. The blister was
now
filled with monitoring equipment, giant red spheres studded with silver
and gray cubes the size of a man's head, tracting back and forth within
the blister's shell, silently avoiding their human masters whenever
encountered
along their complex paths.

Korzenowski floated where the Way's singularity had once been, his
body precessing like a slow top, gray hair standing out from his hand
in
the blister's gentle cooling breezes. With catlike eyes, he observed
the
construction on the southern cap of the seventh chamber, radiating for
kilometers outward from the bore hole, huge black concentric rings of
virtual panicle stimulators and their reservoirs of graviton-stabilized
tritium
metal. These would not be brought into play until after the opening
of the Way; the stimulators could be used as weapons, and were capable
of stripping the Way clear of matter for a distance of several hundred
kilometers, giving the Hexamon its first "beachhead," should it need
one.
Soon, the traction beam radiation shields would be in place to focus
the

ETERNITY ·

backwash of disrupted matter that the stimulators might create along
the
same path as the stimulator beams.
Fearsome weapon, fearsome defenses .
Fearsome opponents.
At rest, Korzenowski's thoughts wandered. He used his two hours of
daily inactivity to put the events of the past few months in
perspective.
The blister was deserted but for him and the machines.
In two more weeks, the Way generators would be ready for tests. Virtual
universes of fractional dimensions continua with little more than
abstract reality would be created in deliberately unstable
configurations.
The night sky over Earth would sparkle with their deaths, as particles
and radiations unknown in this continuum or any stable continuum-left
their tracks in the protesting void.
In three weeks, if the first tests went well, Korzenowski would order
the creation of a torus, an independent and stable universe turned in
upon itself. He would then dismantle the torus and observe how it
faded;
the manner of its demise could give clues as to the state and
superspatial
location of the Way's sealed terminus.
Over the next few months, they would "fish" for that terminus. A
temporary virtual universe the size and shape of the Way, but of finite
length, would be generated, would be encouraged to merge with the
terminus, and would create an attractive bridge between the generators
and their now-independent progeny.
Ramon Rita Tiernpos de Los Angeles
Korzenowski shut his eyes and frowned deeply. He could not help but
know the source of these increasingly frequent interruptions and what
they signified. When Patricia Vasquez's mystery had been transferred to
his assembled partials, to bind them and give them a core, somehow
memory and drive had been transferred as well. In theory, that was
unlikely. But Vasquez had been in a highly disturbed state, and
Korzenowski,
unusually shattered, .had not been a textbook model for the
transfer process.
He did not fight the impulses. For the moment, they did not work
opposite to his wishes, and they did not disturb him unduly. But the
reckoning would have to come soon. He would need to submit to major
personality restructuring.
That was risky and he could not take risks now, central as he was to
the Hexamon's effort.
There, he told himself after a few minutes had passed. Quiet. Peace.
Integratior~
"Konrad," came a voice from the blister's bore hole entrance. Korze-

234 · GREG BEAR

nowski grimaced and turned to face the voice. It was Olmy; they hadn't
talked in weeks. He spread his arms and slowed his precessing, then
tracted outward from the center.
They pitted intimate greetings and embraced each other in the
near-weightlessness.
"My friend," Korzenowski said.
"I've disturbed your free time," Olmy said, pitting polite concern.
"Yes, but no matter. I'm glad to see you."
"Have you heard?"
"Heard what?"
"Garry Lanier suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage."
"He wasn't protected--" Korzenowski's face paled. "He's dead?"
"Very nearly. Karen discovered him a few seconds after it happened
and immediately called Christchurch."
"His damned Old Native pride!" Korzenowski exclaimed. The anger
was not just his own.
"They reached him within ten minutes. He's alive, but he needs
recon-structionmthe
brain is extensively damaged."
Korzenowski closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. He did not
approve of forced medication, but under the circumstances, he doubted
the Hexamon would give Lanier much choice in his treatments. "They did
this to him," he said bitterly. "We've all had a hand in it . . ."
"There's guilt enough to go around," Olmy said. "If Karen consents to
reconstruction, most of the damage can be reversed . . . But he'll need
medical aid that he's always been on record as refusing."
"Have you told Ram Kikura?"
Oimy shook his head. "She's being kept under house arrest, held in a
communications null. Besides, my own leash is short."
"So is mine," Korzenowski said, "but I can swing wide enough to hit
some influential people."
"I appreciate that," Olmy said. 'I'm afraid my political status is
uncertain
at the moment."
"Why?"
"I've refused to take command of the Emergency Defense Effort."
"You'd be the best choice," Korzenowski said. "Why refuse?"
Olmy smiled and shook his head.
Korzenowski, stating into his eyes, felt a small tingle of sympathy.
He's not alone, either. But he couldn't decide what made him feel that
way, or what the feeling implied.
"I'll explain later. It's not the time now. I think I'll be hard to
reach
for a while, however." The last message he pitted in tight-beam so that

ET E R N I TY · 235

only Korzenowski could receive it. "If you need to tell me anything,
please . . ."

Korzenowski examined Olmy for a moment, then pitted, "I'll feel very
alone without you to speak to, should I need you . . . or Garry, or Ram
Kikura."

Olmy nodded understanding. "Perhaps we'll all meet again. Star, Fate
and Pneuma willing." He tracted swiftly back to the bore hole.

Korzenowski floated alone once again in the blister, surrounded by
wheeling machines, red spheres and gray cubes. No use trying to rest
now,
he told himself, and returned to work.

FORTY-SEVEN

Earth

Lanier struggled on the lip of a well. Every time he relaxed his hands
and
waited to fall, somebody held on to'him. He could not die. He began to
resent being saved. So long as he was alive, he was condemned to suffer
the sour old-party taste in his mouth, and feel the constant disruption
in
his stomach and bowels. In a moment of lucidity, he tried to remember
who he was and could not.

Light exploded around him. He seemed bathed in supernal glory. At
the same moment, his mind itched. And he heard the first clear words in
what seemed a very long time: "We've done all we can without
reconstruction.''

He pondered those words, so familiar and yet alien.
"He wouldn't want [hat."
Karen.

"Then there's nothing more we can do."

"Will he become conscious again?"

"He's conscious now, in a way. He's probably listening to us."
"Can he speak?"

"I don't know. Try him."

"Garry? Can you hear me?"

Yes why not just let me die Karen No there's "work to do."

235 · GREG BEAR

"Gantt? What work?"
is the Recovery over
". . recovery over . "
"Garry, you've been very ill. Can you hear me?"
"Yes."
"I couldn't just let you die. I called the Hexamon medical center in
Christchurch. They've done all they can for now . . ."
He still couldn't see, couldn't tell whether his eyes were open or
closed;
the glory had faded to brown darkness.
" . don't let them."
"What?"
"Don't let them."
"Garry, you tell me what to do."
She was speaking Chinese. She sounded very unhappy. He was making
her unhappy.
"What's reconstruction?"
Another voice interposed, speaking English. "Ser Lanier, you can't
recover fully without reconstruction. We send tiny mobile medical
devices
into your brain and they help repair nerve tissue."
"No new body."
"Your body is fine, such as it is. It's your brain that's damaged."
"No privilege."
"What's he mean?" the voice asked somebody else. Karen responded.
"He doesn't want any privileged medical attention."
"Ser Lanier, this is standard procedure. You meanm" voice fading,
addressing somebody else, perhaps Karen again, "--he refuses implant
preservation?"
"He always has."
"None of that involved here, Ser. Straight medicine. You haven't
refused
medical help before."
No, I haven't. Long life.
"Although I must say, if you'd come in to Christchurch, we could
have told you this was coming on. We could have prevented it."
"Are you from orbiting bodies?" Lanier asked slowly. He opened his
eyes, could feel the eyelids open, but still saw nothing.
"I was trained there, Ser. But I'm from Melbourne, born and bred.
Can't you hear the Stfine?"
In fact, he could now; the thick Australian accent.
"All fight," he said. Did he have any choice? Was he too afraid of
dying, after all? He could hardly think, much less think straight. He
simply did not want to be responsible for Karen's pain.

ETERNITY · 237

Karen wept somewhere far away. The sounds faded and the brownness
darkened to black. Before losing all consciousness, he heard another
voice, this one with a Russian accent.
"Garry. More help coming. Get well, my friend."
Mirsky.

FORTY-EIGHT

Thistledown

Olmy had decided to disappear when it had become apparent they were
going to offer him the command position. There was more risk than he
was willing to take in harboring the Jart and standing at the center of
the
Hexamon's most sensitive activities.
After speaking with Korzenowski, he returned to his apartment below
the Nexus chambers, then to his old apartment in Alexandria, and
cleaned both of all traces. He then prepared to deactivate his library
link.
He hesitated. Before severing all ties, he had one last duty to
perform. He
called up his favorite tracer and inquired as to the whereabouts of his
son.
Thistledown, the tracer quickly replied.
"incarnate?"
"Successfully born and now receiving body indoctrination."
Neither he nor Ram Kikura had been there. . . Guilt and remorse
were not emotions implants were made to control. "Can I speak to him
outside of open channels?"
The tracer did not ~espond for several seconds. "Not directly. But he
has set up a clandestine data account that can only be accessed by
you."
Olmy smiled. "Access it."
The account contained only a single message. "Accepted for defense
service. First duty in a few days. Success to us all, Father."
Olmy read the message several times, and viewed the accompanying
pict signifying love, respect and admiration. Without thinking, he
reached out to touch the pict. His fingers passed through it.
"I have a message for my son," he said. "And a request."

238 · GREG BEAR
When the message was in Tapi's account, Olmy withdrew the tracer
and shut down the terminal.
The time had come to hide himself where he was certain he could not
be located. Stockpiling the few resources he needed, he moved them into
a maintenance worker's temporary quarters in a service tunnel near the
north cap, third quarter.
He was not yet ready to present his information to the Hexamon; there
was much more work to do. As yet, he had nothing that might be
strategically
useful; he had learned a great deal about Jart society, but nothing
significant about Jart science and technology. There was little chance
this
Jart carried detailed information about such things; that would have
been
foolish in the extreme, given its mission. But Olmy still felt the need
for a
few more weeks of investigation . .
In truth, he was losing himself in the study. He saw the trap his own
trap, not the Jart's--and carefully avoided it; he could bury himself
in his
own head and simply process the information his partial passed on, for
months at a time, returning to the outside world only to take his
nutrient
supplements and perhaps check on progress with the reopening.
He had never been given the opportunity to study an enemy so closely,
so intimately; and studying one's enemy was like examining a skewed
mirror of one's self. In time, playing against the strengths and
weaknesses
of an opponent, one could become a kind of negative impression, like a
superimposed mold. And vice versa.
Olmy no longer despised the Jart. He sometimes thought himself close
to understanding it.
They had worked out a kind of psychological pidgin that allowed each
to think in the other's manner, within a common bond of language. They
had begun exchanging personal information no doubt carefully selecting
and pruning, but still offering each other personal insights. Olmy told
the Jart of his background, his natural birth and conservative
upbringing,
the Exiling of the orthodox Naderites from the second chamber city; he
did not tell of Korzenowski's stored partials and his centuries-long
conspiracy.
And through the Jart, Olmy learned:

A civilized planet is a black planet. No waste and no chance of
detection. We hide here and prepare ourselves for service in the
IZ~by. There are many planets like this, where expediters in and
out of service wait for their assignments. {I} was brought into
service on such a world, lovely dark against the stars; {I} do
not know what a natural birth is. { We} have been brought into

ET E R N ITY · 239

service by duty expediters for as long as {my} memory is informed;
at creation, {we} are supplied with knowledge necessary
to {our} immediate duties. Reassignments bring further
knowledge; {we} do not forget our past assignments, but place
them in reserve, that they may inform {us}in emergency later.

Olmy told the Jart about human childhood: education, entertainment,
choosing and receiving one's first implants, the libraries; he did not
tell
the Jart about the Thistledown or what it was, and he carefully
monitored
his visual information so that the Jart could not see the starship's
gently curving chambers. He tried to provide the illusion that he, too,
had been born and raised on a planet.
In time, he hoped to be able to penetrate the Jart's analogous lie~.
After all, he was the captor; he had the upper hand. Perhaps later,
when
he had become completely sure of his mastery, he would tell the Jart
nothing but truth, and all of the truth.
For the moment, however, they circled around complete disclosure..
Outside, the Hexamon worked steadily toward its goals. Olmy sometimes
accessed a public library terminal away from his hideout, using his
tracer to penetrate Hexamon propaganda, which had become oppressively
thick. The Hexamon seemed to be hiding from itself, guilty for its
actions. It needed to convince itself again and again.
Olmy was not encouraged by such subterfuge. It led to blunders and
bad judgment. All of his worst suspicions and fears about the current
Hexamon leadership were being realized.
After the mens publica mandate, the re-opening was on schedule. The
defenses were nearly complete. The Way could be reconnected within a
month, perhaps less; citizens on the orbiting bodies were enthusiastic
but
nervous.
On Earth, the Terrestrial Senate had been placed in emergency recess.
The senators and corpreps were sequestered, as were a number of
territorial
governors.
Ram Kikura was still kept under house arrest and in a communications
null in Axis Euclid.
Olmy received this information with grim resignation. There had always
been the potential; now the potential was actual. The reopening
had become an obsession, and nothing would stand in its waymnot even
the honor and tradition of a thousand years.

240 · GREG BEAR

In time, he might come to respect the Sarts, with their single-minded
purity, more than his own people, mired in hypocrisy and confusion.
He returned to his study.

FORTY-NINE

Earth

"Was Pavel Mirsky here?" Lanier asked as Karen turned him over and
checked the flotation fields beneath him. She straightened and gave him
an odd look, puzzled and irritated at once.
"No," she said. "You've been dreaming."
He swallowed and nodded: probably so. "How long have I been
asleep?"
"It wasn't sleep," she said. "You've been reintegrating. They added the
last repair microbes to your blood two days ago. You almost died . ."
She rolled him back onto the fields. "About two months ago."
"Oh."
She stood above him, face stern. "You almost did it."
He smiled weakly. "I don't remember much about it. Was I trying to
find you, when it happened?"
"You were sitting on your chair on the porch. It was cold outside. You
· . . I found you tipped over in the chair." She shook her head
slowly.
"Sometimes I hated you. Sometimes . . ."
"I didn't know it was coming," he said.
"Garry, your father."
"I'm not him."
"You acted as if you wanted to die."
"Maybe I did," he said quietly. "But I didn't want to lose you."
"You wanted me to go with you, perhaps?" She sat on the side of the
bed, on the edge of the soft purple sleep fields. "I'm not ready for
that."
"No."
"You look old enough to be my father."
"Thanks."
She took his jaw in one hand and gently twisted his head to one side,

ET E R N I TY · 241

touching a bump at the base of his neck. "They put a temporary implant
in you. You can remove it later if you want. But right now, you're a
ward
of the Hexamon."
"Why? They lied to me . . ." He lifted his head and reached up,
feeling the tiny bump himself. So there it is~ I'm angry.., very angry.
,4nd I'm relieved, too.
"The Hexamon wants you alive. Senator Ras Mishiney has been made
the temporary administrator of New Zealand and North Australia . .
he ordered you be kept alive, and that an implant be installed whatever
your feelings, so his job won't be made any harder. You're a hero,
Garry.
If you die, who knows what Old Natives will imagine?"
"You let them do it?"
"They didn't tell me until after. They didn't give me any choice." Her
voice softened, and her lip began to tremble. "I told them what you
wanted. They did what they said they'd do at first, and then Ras
Mishiney came . . . a sympathy visit, he said." She wiped her palm
across a damp cheek. "He ordered them to put in the implant. He said it
must stay until the crisis is over."
Lanier lay back on the fields and closed his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I thought you were dead." She stood, then sat down again and
covered both her cheeks with her hands, eyes squeezed tight shut. "I
thought we could never resolve . . . what . "
He reached up to her arm but she shrugged his hand away.
"I'm sorry," he repeated, reaching for her arm again. She did not
refuse his touch this time. "I've been selfish."
"You've been a man- of principle," she said. "I respected you and I was
afraid for myself."
"A man of principle can be a selfish man," Lanier said.
She shook her head and took his hand in hers. "You made me feel
guilty. After all we've done for the Earth, not to share. . its
handicaps.''
He looked at the bedroom window. It was night. "What's been
happening?''
he asked.
"They're not telling us everything. I think they're close to
reopening."
He tried to get out of bed, but the long convalescence had weakened
him, and he gave up the effort. "I'd like to talk to the
administrator," he
said. "If I'm important enough to keep alive, maybe I'm important
enough to talk to."
"He won't talk to any of us. Not really tallc He's full of platitudes.
I've
come to hate them so, Garry."

242 · GREG BEAR

What a shock it must have been, Lanier thought, sitting on the porch,
wrapped in blankets even though the air was warming. Summer. The
Earth was going through its cycles, raw and uncontrolled and beautiful
and ugly. What a shock to come from the perfect, controlled, rational
environment of the lZ~y and descend like angels into the squalor of the
past.
He lifted his notepad and scrolled the display through what he had
written. Scowling, dissatisfied, he deleted a few paragraphs of
obfuscation
and tried to remember the words he had just pieced together in his
head.
They don't need us, he wrote. Everything they need is in the Stone--the
Thistledown and when they re-open the V~y, once again they'll have
more than they need·
"If not more than they can handle," he murmured, fingers trembling
slightly above the notepad keys.
Lanier had decided the time had come to write down all he had lived
through. If he was to be kept isolated from the play of history, then
he
could record what he had already experienced. His memory seemed
sharper after the reconstruction, a sensation he luxuriated in while at
the
same time experiencing more than a twinge of guilt. This was something
he could do, under arrest or not; in time, perhaps what he recorded
would influence people. If there was any profundity left in him.
What a shock, he began again, to find the past full of people who knew
nothing of psychological medicine, people with minds as bent and warped
and distorted (he deleted bent and warped) as nature and circumstance
could (he stopped, having written himself into a corner. Started over.)
· . . minds as distorted as the bodies of people in ancient times,
gnomish,
shriveled, withered, ugly, clinging to their ragged personalities,
cherishing
their warps and diseases, fearful of some mandated, standard mental
health that might make them all alike. People too ignorant to see that
there are as many varieties of healthy thinking as there are diseased;
perhaps
more· Freedom lay in control and correction, the newly formed
Terrestrial
Hexamon knew, yet what a task lay before them! Tricks and subterfuge,
outright lies, were necessary in a constant struggle against the
ravages of the Death as well as the causes of that disaster. And just
as I was
broken on the wheel of ministering to this misery, so the Hexamon in
time
wished for...
He paused. What? A return to the good old days? To the world they
were in fact more familiar with, more comfortable with, despite their
philosophies and stated goals? The Sundering had been the decision of a
moment, in Hexamon time, just as now the re-opening was. Spikes in the

ETERNITY · 243

smooth graph of Hexamon history. Points of cataclysmic fracture in a
glassy matrix.
All very human, despite the centuries of Talsit and psychological
medicine.
Even a healthy, sane culture, with healthy, sane individuals, could
not rise above strife and discord; it was simply more polite, less
senselessly
destructive and horrifying.
Karen had said she hated them now; Lanier could not bring himself to
share that emotion. Whatever his anger, his disappointment, he still
admired
them. They had finally admitted to a fact that had been obvious all
along. Humans of the past Old Natives could never comfortably mesh
with humans of the future. Certainly not in a matter of decades, and
not
with the reduced resources available.
With a suspicious eye, he tracked a white speck flying above the green
hills to the south, watching it pass behind trees and out of his line
of
sight. He glanced at his watch. "Karen," he called. "They're coming."
She pushed through the screen door, carrying a tray of repotted plants.
"Supplies?"
"I'd guess," he answered.
"How kind." She didn't sound bitter now; they were resigned to being
pushed out of the way. "Maybe we can coax some straight news out of
whomever it is."
The small shuttle came to a frozen hover above the small square of
garden and grassy yard in front of the cabin. A traction field touched
the
ground, extending from the craft's nose hatch, and a young neoGeshel
homorph in black descended. They had never seen him before. Lanier
gathered up his blankets and threw them over the chair arm, standing
with notepad in hand.
"Hello," the young man said. He seemed oddly familiar in manner if
not in looks. "My name is Tapi Ram Olmy. Ser Lanier?"
"Hello," Lanier said. "My wife, Karen."
The young man smiled. "I've brought supplies, as scheduled." He
glanced around, still smiling but apparently ill at ease. "Pardon my
awkwardness.
I'm a newb6rn. I passed my incarnation exams three months
ago. The real world is . . . well, it's vivid."
"Would you like to come in?" Karen invited.
"Yes. Thank you." As he climbed up the steps to the porch, he removed
a palm-length silver wand from a pocket in his black suit and ran
his finger along a glowing green line on one side. "Your house isn't
monitored," he said. "There are only monitors on the perimeter."
"They don't care what we say or do," Karen said, no edge in her voice,
only weary acquiescence.

244 · GREG BEAR

"Well, that's an advantage. I bring a package from my father."
"You're Suli Ram Kikura's and Olmy's son?" Lanier asked.

"That I am. Mother nobody can reachwthey're very afraid of her. But
she'll be free soon. My father is hiding, not because they're after
him.

· . I don't know why he's hiding, truly. But he thought you might like
a clear, clean report of what's happening on Thistledown." The young
man looked solemn. "I could get in a fair amount of trouble. But my
father took chances in his career, too."

"They designed well," Lanier said, translating a Hexamon picted
compliment
into English.

"Thank you." Ram Olmy handed the old-fashioned memory cubes to
Lanier. "You can probably spend a few weeks reading what's in there. No
picts, just text. Father had it translated from picts where necessary.
I can
give a summary . "

"Please," Lanier said. "Have a seat." He indicated a wingedback chair
near the hearth. Ram Olmy sat, clasping his hands in front of him.

"The Engineer is going to create a number of virtual universes tonight.
To fish out the end of the Way. I think you'll be able to see the side
effects. It's going to be spectacular."

Lanier nodded, not sure he was up to spectacular wonders just now.

"The defenses are in place. They haven't been tested, but soon. I'm

assigned to one of the test crews."

"Good luck."

"I appreciate your irony, Ser Lanier," Ram Olmy said. "If all goes
well, the Way will be reconnected in a week, and the first test opening
will

be within two weeks. I hope to be there when it's opened."

"Should be quite a moment."

Lanier hadn't taken a seat. Karen stood behind him. Ram Olmy
looked up at them, eyes calm but body still not at ease. He moved his
hands to the chair arms and then clasped them again. Like a young colt,
Lanier thought.

"I have a message from Konrad Korzenowski, too," Ram Olmy said.
"Ser Mirsky hasn't been seen anywhere. The Engineer told me to tell
you, 'The avater has fled.'"

Lanier nodded. Then he turned and said to Karen, "We're making the
boy uncomfortable. Let's sit." They pulled up chairs. Karen offered
refreshments,
but Ram Olmy demurred.

"I'm built on slightly different lines than my father. Not as
efficient,
but I don't need Talsit devices." He held out his hands, obviously
proud
of his new material form.

ETERNITY · 245

Lanier smiled. Tapi reminded him of Olmy, and that memory was
pleasant. Karen seemed less taken by this breath of Hexamon wind.
"Why is your father in hiding?"
"I think he's expressing some kind of disapproval, but I truly don't
know. We're all embarrassed by your isolation here. I don't know of
anybody in the defense and protection league who approves of the way
Earth's being treated . "
"But you see it as a necessity," Karen said.
Ram Olmy regarded her with steady, clear eyes. "No, Ser Lanier. I
don't. The Emergency Laws put responsibility for decisions on the
president
and Special Nexus Council. They give us the orders. Disobeying the
orders, under these same rules, means loss of incarnation privileges
and
direct downloading to city memory. That would put me back where .I
started."
"How did you pull this duty?" Lanier asked.
"Excuse me . . pull?"
"Get this duty."
"I requested,it. Nobody saw anything to object to. I said you were
friends of my father, and of the Engineer, and that I could carry a
message
from the Engineer to you."
"They aren't secluded?"
"No. My father's hiding, but he hasn't broken any laws. They can't
make you take command positions. That would be ridiculous."
"Korzenowski volunteered?" Karen asked, her interest growing.
"I'm not sure what his motives are. Sometimes he seems quite strange,
but he's getting his work done. So I hear. The Special Nexus Committee
can't control all communication links; there's considerable gossip on
Thistledown. I see him very seldom, and his partial gave me this
message.''
"We appreciate your bringing it to us," Lanier said.
"My pleasure. My mother and father mentioned you often. They said
you were among the best Old Natives. I also wanted to say . . .' He
stood abruptly. "I have to be getting back now. The supplies are
unloaded.
When this is over, when the Way is re-opened, the Hexamon feels
it can finally have the resources to finish our work on Earth. I look
forward to that, and I'd like to volunteer now, to work with you on any
project you might lead. Both of you. It would be my honor, and both my
mother and father would be very pr°ud.''
Lanier shook his head slowly. "This will never be over," he said. "Not
in the way the Hexamon imagines."

245 · GREG BEAR

"Mirsky's warning?" Ram Olmy asked.

"Perhaps. And abuse of trust," Lanier replied. "The Hexamon will
have a lot of patching to do."

Ram Olmy sighed. "We've all listened to the testimony. Nobody
knows what to make of it. The Special Nexus Committee says it's a
forgery."

Lanier's face flushed. "You must have your mother's and father's
brains, if they mixed you together out of their own personalities. What
do
you think?"

"He's caught up in the adventure, Garry," Karen said. Her attitude
had softened. "Don't be harsh on him."

"Mirsky was no sham," Lanier continued. "He was here, and he convinced
the Engineer, and your father, I'm fairly sure, and your mother.
His warning was serious."

"Where is he, then, Ser?"

"I don't know," Lanier said.

"I'd be interested in meeting him, if he returns."

"If he returns. What if someone or something more powerful than
Mirsky takes notice of the Hexamon's intransigence?" Lanier stood
slowly, more agitated than he wished to appear. "Thank you for visiting
us. Tell whomever is interested that we are well. I am recovering. Our
attitudes have not changed. If anything, they have hardened. Tell your
superiors this for us."

"Yes, Ser. If the occasion arises." He thanked Karen for her
hospitality,
locked eyes with Lanier, and nodded. "Good-by."

"Star, Fate and Pneuma be with us all," Lanier said.

They escorted the young man to the front yard, where remotes had
finished the unloading and were now tracting back into their holds in
the
craft's underside. Ram Olmy boarded and the craft rose quickly,
spinning
about to head west against the fading skyglow.

Karen put her arm around him and kissed his cheek. "Well said."

"He seems to be a good fellow," Lanier said. "Still, he's one of them.
Heart and soul."

"His father's son, more than his mother's."

Lanier kissed the top of her head. Twilight was blending into night. He
looked up expectantly and shivered. "What magic is the old wizard going
to work this evening?"

"I'll bring out the blankets," Karen said. "And the heater."

For a moment, standing alone in the yard with the stars coming out
above him, Lanier did not know whether it was good or horrible to be

ETERNITY · 247

alive. He could not stop the gooseflesh from rising on his arms. This
is
real, he reminded himself. I'm awake.
Soon, Korzenowksimand perhaps a part of Patricia Vasquez would
be playing with the ghosts of universes. Karen returned and they
prepared
a place on the grass.
"I wouldn't miss this for anything," she said softly. "They're
bastards,
but they're brilliant bastards."
Lanier nodded, clutching her hand.
"I love you," he said, tears coming to his eyes.
She lay her head against his shoulder.

Early the next morning, on his notepad, Lanier wrote: We saw thepoint
of Thistledown low to the northwest, soft and ill-defined. The night
was
warm and my from bones did not ache; my mind is more clear than it's
been
in recent memory, shockingly clear. I had my Karen lying next to me. We
were among the few on Earth who knew what to expect this evening---or
did we?
We owe them so much, these determined angels, our distant children. A
lump came to my throat, simply watching the Thistledown--the
Stone--ascend
a few degrees. I feared for them. What if they made a mistake and
destroyed themselves? What if Mirsky's gods at the end of time decide
to
intervene? Where are we then?
Straight beams of clear white light fanned out from the Stone and
crossed three quarters of the sky, reaching tens of thousands of
kilometers
into space, pointing away from Earth. I do not know what they were; not
light alone, surely, for lasers or some similar phenomenon could only
be
reflected by dust, and there is not so much dust in space. We sat
almost as
ignorant as savages. The lines of light faded abruptly, and for a
moment
there was nothing but the stars and the Stone, brighter now, higher in
the
northwest. I thought perhaps Korzenowski had thrown a rough sketch
across the heavens, and this was all we would see.
But from the point of the Stone, across the entire night sky, there
unfurled
a gorgeous curtain of violet and blue, taking seconds to reach from
horizon to horizon. Within the curtain glowed indistinct patches of
red,' it
took us several seconds to see, within the unfocused patches, images of
the
crescent moon, somehow lensed to two or three dozen locations.
The curtain then shredded, like rotten fabric washed apart by a river
current. Where it had been, there now curled lazy arms of green, the
tentacles of a monstrous jellyfish spiraling and vibrating. There was
an
organic ugliness in this that made me want to turn away; I was
witnessing

248 · GREG BEAR

some unnatural birth, with the attendant gore and mystery; space being
distorted or used in ways it is not accustomed to.

Then all dimmed and the stars returned, clear and sharp, undisturbed.
F~tatever happened now, could not be seen by ua

FIFTY

Thistledown

Korzenowski looked down on the sixth chamber through the blister
covering
the northern cap bore hole, fingers working restlessly on a small die
of nickel-iron. Beside him, the president floated with arms folded, in
ceremonial robe and cap resembling a Mandarin lord. He had come from
a special Nexus session to observe the second and third series of
tests;
now they waited to see how the sixth chamber machinery would react.

A small plume of smoke rose from the third quarter; already, aircraft
hovered around the damage site.

"You know what that is?" Farren Siliom inquired.

"Fire in an inertial control radiation duct," Korzenowski said, paying
the president little attention. His eyes were on the key points in the
sixth
chamber, points where any kind of pseudo-spatial backscatter could blow

out huge sections of the valley floor. "It's a minor problem."
"The tests are still successful?"
"Successful," Korzenowski acknowledged.

"How much longer before we make the connection?"

"Nine days," Korzenowski said, giving himself some leeway. "The
machinery needs time to reach equilibrium. We need to let the looped
virtual universe dissolve. Then the path will be clear and we can
reconnect.''

The president pieted a symbol of unenthusiastic acceptance. "Neither I
nor the presiding minister are comfortable with this," he tight-beamed
at
Korzenowski. "We're all forced to do things we'd rather not do, eh?"

Korzenowski glanced at the president with cat-square eyes. You've
made the whole process Draconian as a kind of revenge, he thought. "At

ETERNITY · 249

least we'll be going home," he said flatly. "Back to a life we may have
been ill-advised to leave in the first place."
Farren Siliom did not respond to this unconcealed self-criticism.
Korzenowski had been the inspiration for just that action.
The web had become too tangled to ever separate single strands.

FIFTY-ONE

Thistledown

What is Pavel Mirsky?
Olmy stopped his exercises on the barren quarters floor and immediately
swung up a second level of barriers; the question had come unbidden,
and not through his partial or the established feed; it was not a stray
thought or a wandering echo.
For several minutes, he stood rigid in the middle of the floor, face
blank, trying desperately to locate the source of the query. It was not
repeated; but as he checked each connection between his implants and
natural mind, he realized repetition would not have been necessary.
Information
had been drawn smoothly and with very few traces of entry
from his original, natural memory.
The barriers had been breached, yet seemed intact.
The room was bleak enough to serve as a tomb. For an instant, he
contemplated blowing up his heart and the implants, but realized he
could not. The voluntary connections had been severed. Now, only if
hidden detectors in the implants were disturbed would he die. Where was
the partial? Had everything been absorbed--including the secrets of his
safeguards?
Is Pavel Mirsky a human like yourself, or is he command from another
concern?
Olmy locked down his thoughts, hoping against hope that not all had
been lost. He did not have the slightest idea what had happened, or how
extensive the breach was.
I am finding much hidden information that provides missing color and
form, the voice continued. It felt very similar to his own internal
voice.

250 · GREG BEAR

That told Olmy that his natural subpersonalities, what the Hexamon
psychologists called "functionary agents," had been suborned.

Olmy felt like the captain of a ship whose crew has been suddenly and
inexplicably possessed by demons. The "bridge" had been peaceful until
just now; but peering below decks told a quite different story.

You are not command nor are you duty expediter. ,/Ire you command
oversight in temporary physical form? No. We see you are a simple
expediter
given extraordinary privileges. No. Even more astonishing. You have
taken these privileges upon yourself

Olmy was fully aware he had made a horrible mistake. All of his
safeguards had been sidestepped, so far; he had severely underestimated
the Jart.

This Pavel Mirsky. There is nothing like him in your available memory.
Nor in associated memory, nor in memory we have been given permission
to access. Pavel Mirsky is unique and surprising. What is his message?

For a moment, Olmy thought that to allow the Jart access to this
seeming irrelevancy could give him a chance to recover control and kill
himself. Olmy prepared and released a summary of Mirsky's story.

The Jart's control could not be shaken. As Olmy's sense of helplessness
and horror grew, its cool, speculative fascination with Mirsky
increased.

Mirsky is no longer of your rank and order. He is not human, yet once
was; he returns with a message but you do not know how he returnx
Mirsky has been awaited by us, yet appears to you; perhaps it has
appeared
to our kind also, but unknown to you.

Mirsky is messenger/expediter from descendant command.

Olmy tried to control his panic and relax. The situation had happened
so quickly, with no warning, that some time passed before he fully
realized
their situations had reversed. He was the prisoner now, his personality
fragmented and completely under the Jart's power. What little of his
mind was left to him--he quickly scanned his available natural memories
and found most of them blocked by Jart inhibitors could hardly
understand
the Jart's last clear statement.

The Jart found Mirsky's presence very significant.

Your struggle is illuminating. I spread faster with each status search
you
make.

"I acknowledge your control," Olmy said.

Good. You fear what I will do to your kind. Harm to your kind was my
original instruction, but it is superseded now. News of the appearance
ora
messenger from descendant command is far more important than our
conflicts.

"How did you break through the barriers?"

ETERNITY ·

Inappropriate curiosity./Ire you not fascinated by messenger Mirsky?

Olmy buried a fragment of himself that wanted to scream. "Yes,
fascinated
and puzzled. But how did you break through my barriers?"

Your understanding of certain algorithms is incomplete./I flaw of your
kind's development, perhaps. I have been in control an indefinite but
significant
number of periods now.

"You've been playing with me . . ."

Does a failed > amateur < deserve greater consideration? You do not fit
in a rank that we acknowledge respect for. Nevertheless, I will accord
you
the respect you have accorded me.

Had he been integrated, Olmy knew this would have been the lowest
point of his long life. As it was, he felt a distant, free-floating
misery, like
a soul disembodied in some hideous afterlife, powerless to change or

move.

It will soon be possible to give this important information to command
oversight, the Jart said. If you help, integration of your personality
parts
will be allowed, and you may witness this important event with full
facul-tie~

"I will not cooperate if you seek to harm my people."

No harm to hosts of messenger. You have been recognized and by our
law must be spared from storage and packaging. You are now expediters
of
descendant command.

Olmy tried to think that through. The risk was too great to even begin
to think the Jart meant Hexamon no harm . . It had admitted that its
primary mission had been harm. "What do you want to do?"

We must return to the F~y. Command oversight must be informed.
Olmy knew he had no real choice. He had been hopelessly outmatched;
he could not help but wonder whether, in time, the Jarts would
have outmatched them all. Or was that a serf-serving underestimation of
his own, uniquely personal failure?

252 · GREG BEAR

FIFTY-TWO

Efficient Gaia

Rhita felt like a caged animal. She did not want to know the truth;
Rhodos was approaching rapidly, and it would reveal the truth. She was
trapped in the bubble with a bent and distorted monstrosity, some
unlikely
battered doll of a human being. She heard it standing up behind
her and dared not turn to look at it. Knuckles white on the railing,
she
closed her eyes, then opened them again, telling herself, This is what
you
wanted. To see it all.
But her reservoirs of strength had long since been tapped out. She
opened her mouth to speak, and closed it to mute a shriek. Shaking her
head, she bent over the railing and flung herself back, straining her
arms
and hands, wild with the grief she did not yet completely feel, but
soon
would, as surely as this was Gaia, the real world, her home.
Rhodo's commercial harbor was visible, and the long bridge of land to
the fortress of Kambys~s across from Patrikia's house that overlooked
the old military harbor. The city of Rhodos itself was gone, bare brown
dirt spread flat in its place. "Where is it?" she breathed.
The island was studded with gold-topped pillars of stone. From inland
mountains to coastline, the pillars rose like a Kroisos's dream of
mushroom
growths. "Why?" she cried out. "What are they?"
T~ph6n's speech was muffled now. He said something but she could
not understand and refused to turn around to look at him. It.
The sun set behind them as the bubble slowed and approached the
headland where Patrikia's house had been or still was, Rhita saw,
surrounded
by a fence of the same fringed metal snakes they had met with in
the camp, it seemed much less than years before.
"Your temple is near here, too," T~ph6n said. She heard it standing up
behind her and felt an awful crawling along her spine; there were
things
worse than death, among them being in the service of these monsters.
She
wiped her face quickly with the palm of one hand, turned and faced the
battered escort. "Why are these places still here?"

ET E R N I TY · 253

"Because they mean something to you," T~phOn said. It reached up
and pushed the top of its head back into place. She swallowed hard to
restrain another urge to throw up. She had one thing she must hold on
to, and that was the bare remaining shred of her dignity.
"This whole world is significant to me," she said. "Put it back the way
it was."
T~ph6n made a sound like a small dog choking, and its speech became
much clearer. "Not possible. Already close to exceeding budget. Your
world will have its uses. It will become its own repository; whoever
wishes to study Gaia in later cycles will come here and do so.
Meanwhile,
it serves as a place to raise and train young. What you would call a
holy
place."
"None of my people are alive?"
"Very few have died," T~ph~n said, adjusting a shoulder.
She remembered the unexpected yielding of its substance and turned
away again, fist thrust into her mouth.
"In truth, more of your kind would have died had we not come here.
By far the great majority are in storage. It is not unpleasant; my
selves
have been there many times. Unlike death, storage is not final."
She shook her head, numb to the horror but unwilling to listen to more
useless talk. "Where are my companions? You said you'd bring them
here."
"They are here." The bubble moved through Patrikia's gray and
withered garden; the orange trees were dusty skeletons. They approached
the house, and from behind the house other bubbles emerged, one
containing
Demetrios, another Lugotorix, a third Oresias. Each was accompanied
by an escort: Oresias by what seemed to be an older woman,
Lugotorix by a red-headed old man, Demetrios by a slender young male
in student's garb.
Lugotorix stood with arms crossed and eyes tightly closed. What he
can't see can't make him more. miserable.
T~ph6n kept silent behind her. The bubbles orbited slowly about each
other in Patrikia's yard. Lugotorix seemed to sense her presence and
opened his eyes, looking on her with an expression of fierce joy; he
had
not failed completely. Demetrios merely nodded, unwilling to meet her
stare. Oresias seemed unable to raise his head.
Defeat. Final and total. No going back.
What would Patrikia do? If she were here, having lost two homes, two
worlds .... Rhita did not doubt the old Soph would simply have laid
herself down and died. The enormity was truly outside the range of a
human mind.

254 · GREG BEAR

There was no hope. "The whole world is dead," she said.
"No," Tpph6n corrected her.
"Shut up," she said sharply. "It's dead."
The escort did not contradict her again.
She tried to speak with the others, but no sound passed between them.
Suddenly, she turned and faced Tgph6n. On his distorted face there was
a triumphant expression, brief but unmistakable. He had absorbed
enough humanity to mimic exultation.
She had been brought here, she now believed, in part at least so that
the victors could measure their triumph. Prisoners on parade.
She did not turn away. There had been no satisfaction in knocking the
escort about; clearly, abuse did not bother T.~ph0n. And there was
scant
satisfaction in defiance. She was too small and limited to even begin
to
search for weaknesses. Still, Rhita needed to do something, to pick up
some thread, or indeed she would just lie down and die.
But they would not let her die. She would be stored. And someday,
surely the people who had built the Way would fight the Jarts again,
perhaps destroy them, perhaps find her and her companions, and bring
them back. Could that much be hoped? She could barely even conceive of
such things.
But Patrikia would have grabbed at any thread.
Rhita seized this one and observed Tpph0n calmly now, having lost
everything and knowing it if not accepting. "Take us back," she said.
"This means nothing to you?"
She shook her head.
"You do not wish to visit the temple?"
"NO."
"Do you wish to die?" TpphOn inquired curiously, politely.
"Are you offering?"
"No. Of course not."
"Just take me back."
"Yes."
The interior of the bubble seemed to fill with gelatinous smoke. She
felt
all weight lift from her feet.
Store me, she thought. Pack me away.
My time must come again.
Oblivion would have been welcome, if she could have known she
would not be disturbed.

ET E R N I TY · 255

FIFTY-THREE

Earth, Thistledown

Lanier had resumed walking the trails again, climbing the side of the
mountain, looking down over the autumn-brown grasslands and the
increased
flocks of sheep. Despite all that had happened, he thought himself
a contented man. He could not save all of humanity from its follies;
could not stop the flow of history.
Losing his sense of responsibility was a necessary liberation; he had
spent much of his life helping others. Now was the time to calm himself
and prepare for his own next step.
Despite the forced implant, and his relief at being saved from death,
he
knew he would not choose immortality. When the time came--whether it
be ten years, or fifty years he would be prepared.
He did not think his personality was so valuable that it should impose
itself on others for more than a century. This was not humility, nor
was it
exhaustion; it was the way he had been raised.
He accepted that Karen did not agree. Even so, they were much closer
than they had been in years. That was sufficient.
Two months after his recovery, on a particularly crystalline night,
they
walked under the stars. Thistledown was not visible. "I'm not sure I
care what's happening up there, down there." She pointed through the
Earth
at where Thistledown might be~
Lanier nodded. They walked on, lantern illuminating the trail in a blue
circle for several meter's ahead. "That's where we met," he said, and
it
sounded silly once he said it; silly and awkward, the words of an
uncertain
youth, not an old man. Karen smiled at him.
"We have had many good years, Garry," she said. Then, with her
usual directness, she said, "What's more important to us now, our past
together, or our future?"
He could not answer. In a way, he Was being forced to stay alive. That
implied that he wanted his future to be brief.... Yet he did not wish
to
die. He simply wanted equality and justice, and under the present cfi
255 · GREG BEAR

cumstances, immortality did not seem just. He was willing to die for
these convictions. "Just us, now," he said.

She held his hand more firmly. "All right," she said. "Just now."
Lanier knew that Karen would not stay at his side forever. Once the
isolation was liftedmalmost certain within the next few months--she
would become active again, and perhaps separation would drive them
apart again. He didn't want that, but they were no longer well matched.
He could accept being old; she could not.

Still, there were many people he would like to see again.
Questions he would like to have answered.
Whatever happened to Patricia?

Was she home, or alive in some other alternate universe, or had she
died trying?

Thistledown orbited Earth every five hours and fifty minutes, as it had
since the Sundering. In some regions of the Earth, the asteroid's
bright
star was worshipped even after decades of education and social
engineering;
humanity's psychological yolk sacs could not be eliminated so easily.

The news that the Earth's saviors might soon leave--so the stories had
been simplified caused panic in some areas, relief in others. Those who
worshipped the Thistledown and its occupants believed they were leaving
out of disgust for Earth's sins. They were correct in a sense; but if
the
Earth could not abandon its past, neither could the Hexamon.

With the re-opening on schedule, and Korzenowski's wonders performing
flawlessly, the Nexus Special Committee set about healing some
of the worst wounds in their relations with Earth.

There was not much time; nor did they expend an enormous amount
of effort. The Hexamon was enthused; hysteria was not possible, or at
least highly unlikely, in the population of the orbiting bodies, but an
almost drugged sense of splendor reigned. They were proud of their
power and cleverness; they were happy to be working to solve otherwise
insoluble problems. And they felt that Earth would benefit in the long
run, that the Way would bring prosperity to them all.

Mirsky's warnings were virtually forgotten. Hadn't the so-called avatar
vanished without trace? If his strength had been so enormous, why
hadn't he put a stop to the vote and forced the Hexamon to do things
his
way? Even Korzenowski gave Mirsky little consideration. There was too
much to do, too many compulsions exterior and interior; and the
interior
compulsions grew stronger with each day.

The Engineer tracted from one end of the bore hole to the other,
wrapped in his closed-end, baggy red robe like an overgrown infant.

ETERNITY · 257
The long, slender shapes of three flawships--transported from Axis
Thoreau two days before, threaded through the Thistledown bore holes
--hung suspended in softly glowing traction cradles, huge dark spindles
along his accustomed path.
These were fully armed vessels, brought in as precaution. They could
also be used to explore the Way.
Korzenowski looked down on the wide, cylindrical valley of the sixth
chamber and felt a yearning he could neither analyze nor repress. The
foundation on which all of his assembled partials had been integrated
now colored him through and through. He did not protest; something
was wrong within him, but it did not stop his work; if anything, it
made
him more brilliant.

For Olmy, dreaming had never been the same with implants, and it
had changed even more radically since the Jart had taken over.
Sleep was not necessary for an implant-aided homorph. The processing
of experiences and memoriesmand the relaxation and play of an
overworked
subconscious mind--took place during Olmy's waking hours;
these activities were assigned to surrogate mentalities within the
implants.
Essentially, Olmy's concentrated conscious effort could continue
at all hours while a parallel mentality "slept" and dreamed. The
mentality
could then refine and filter Olmy's subconscious mental contents.
The process had been perfected across centuries.
Olmy's dreams were intense, as real as waking experiences, like living
in another universe with different (and changing) rules; but he did not
access them unless he wanted to. They had accomplished their purpose
without his necessarily being aware. Eventually, after five or six
years,
dream contents were purged or compressed in his personal implant, and
either downloaded to external personal memory or deleted. Olmy tended
to delete such contents. He was not fond of experiencing his own
dreams,
and seldom did so unless he felt they might hold the resolution to a
pressing personal diffic.ulty.
Now, however, the Jart mentality occupied all of Olmy's available
implant space, including his personal implant. Olmy, even when he had
been in control, had had to reassign subconscious processing to its
natural
center--his primary mentality.
He had had the choice of either sleeping and dreaming, naturally, or
filtering out waking dream experiences. Before the Jart's conquest, he
had chosen the latter. Dreaming while awake posed few problems; he was
mentally disciplined enough to not be distracted.
Now, however, the Jart was controlling and manipulating not only the

258 · GREG BEAR

implants, but his primary conscious and subconscious routines~those
activities which took place within his organic brain. Olmy's conscious
primary self was often shunted into the dream-world abruptly and
without
warning.
It was a realm filled with monsters. The subconscious, all those agents
and routines which handled automatic responses, was in a terrible
state.
Olmy could be consciously calm, but his fundamental self was terrified,
helpless, and in a panic.
Often, when the Jart did not need his immediate attention, he was
forced to wander the dream landscape like a character in a bad
biochrone.
Forced to confront his dreams directly, Olmy found signs of character
flaws that further undermined his already low morale. (Why hadn't he
dealt with these flaws through Talsit or other therapy decades or
centuries
ago? He might not have made the disastrous decision to ingest the
~Iart'if he had been fully rational .) In his dreams, he repeatedly
found suicidal urges and had to fight them off--small, insect-like
creatures
that threatened to eat away his limbs or bite off his head.
Sometimes it took all his courage and will just to survive until the
Jart
allowed his consciousness access to the external world.
In time, he wondered whether the Jart knowingly put him to this
torture as a kind of revenge; drowning him in his own mind, just as the
Jart had been forced to drown in its thoughts until it had slumped into
timeless stasis .
But he had no proof, no evidence the Jart could be cruel or vengeful.
It
simply needed his entire mind to sweep for information, or practice its
masquerade as a human being.
When his personality was foremost and in apparent control of his
body, he could not act on any impulse or plan unless approved by the
Jart.
So far, the Jart had not tripped any of those algorithmic snares that
would kill them both. Not even Olmy knew where they were; the partial
had managed to erase itself just before Olmy's surrender--the Jart's
single
lapse thus far and only the partial had known the locations and
character of the snares.
The Jart, having satisfied itself that its position was now secure,
began
to give Olmy more and more control, and to act more and more as a firm
rider on a horse, rather than a puppet master. For the first time, it
expressed
its wishes as a demand, rather than simply forcing him to act.
We must speak with Korzenowski. Make us available for the reopening.
"They'll open a test connection first," Olmy explained. "It would be

ETERNITY · 25g

better to wait for the final re-opening. Everl better not to be seen in
public at all . . ."
The Jart considered this. We are both on > borrowed time <, no, fellow
expediter? We must act quickly. The risk of early exposure does not
outweigh
the risk of finding your pitfalls. Once his test opening is made,
Korzenowski may have great difficulty closing it.

The sixth chamber machinery had been examined and certified, and
repaired or replaced where necessary; ten thousand corporeal humans,
some seventy thousand partials and innumerable robots and remotes had
done their finest work the past few weeks, at Korzenowski's direction.
The next major test was at hand.
In the final hours before the first connection, the Engineer rested in
his'
spherical quarters, attached to the wall of the bore hole like a
cocoon. He
was mentally and physically near complete exhaustion. Even dividing
himself into a dozen partials could not lighten the burden he carried.
He
had felt this burden before, and in one way it exhilarated him, but it
had
a sour edge.
Once, gate-openers in the Way had relied on psychological self-mastery.
The cloak of ceremony wrapped around a gate-opener's duties
served as a reminder that a fogged or unfocused mind could not properly
use a clavicle . . .
Yet Korzenowski, his mind in turmoil, was about to use the entire
sixth chamber in effect, the Thistledown itself--as a clavicle, opening
something analogous to a huge gate.
He curled tighter in his red robes, resting within a tube of sleepfield
lines. Eyes closed, he released a small cloud of Talsit, the last
genuine
Talsit in the Terrestrial Hexamon, as far as he knew. The session would
not last long enough to clear his thoughts completely, but it would
help.
The fog filled the sleepfield and he inhaled deeply, evenly, letting
the tiny
particles enter through .lungs, skin, wherever they could, cleansing,
correcting,
soothing.
"Ser Korzenowski."
He opened his eyes. Through the thinning Talsit fog, he saw a man
floating nearby. The sphere was locked; no one could enter without the
monitor notifying him. He uncurled, brushing away the last wisps.
Again, it was Olmy. His friend's appearance startled Korzenowski; he
looked unkempt, his eyes did not seem to focus properly, and he smelled
like an ill-tended homorph; he also smelled afraid. Korzenowski's nose
wrinkled.

251) · GREG BEAR

"I would have invited you in," Korzenowski said. "No need to enter

like a thief."

"Nobody knows I'm here."

"Why hide?"

Olmy shrugged. Korzenowski noted that he wore no pictor.
"We've been close friends, more than that even, for a long time."
Korzenowski stretched out and braced himself against a weak traction
field. This sudden awkwardness was peculiar; they had always been at
ease around each other.

"You've always relied upon my judgment . . . trusted me. And I've
always trusted you."

The Engineer liked this conversation less and less. Olmy seemed seat-

tered, almost twitchy. "Yes."

"I'd like to make an unusual request. Something the Hexamon might
disapprove of. I can't explain all my reasons now . . But I think
you'll

have major problems opening a test link with the Way."

"My old friend, I'm expecting problems."

"Not like this. I've been researching, collecting everything that we

know about Jarts. I think I've found a way to prevent even greater
problems
when we complete the re-opening. It may even help with the test.

I'm asking you to send a message down the Way through the test !ink."
"A message to the Jarts?"
Olmy nodded.

"What sort of message?"

"I can't tell you that."

Korzenowski grimaced. "Trust has its limits, Olmy."

"It's necessary; it might save us all from a hideous battle."
"What did you learn that could save us all?"
Olmy shook his head.

"I can't do something so unusual with so little explanation."
"Have I ever asked anything of you before?"
"No."

"This may be primitive, and uncalled for, Konrad . . but you owe

me a favor."

"Very primitive," Korzenowski agreed. For a moment, he had a strong

urge to call security. The urge passed, but it added to his sense of
unease.

"You must trust me that this is very important, and that I cannot
explain now."

Korzenowski regarded the man who had saved his life and arranged

for his resurrection. "You have unique privileges in this community,"
he

ET E R N I TY · 2t51

said· "But as you said, you've never taken advantage of them before .
. .
or taken advantage of me. What sort of message is it?"
Olmy gave him a memory block. "It's recorded here, in a code the
Jarts might understand."
"A message directly to the Jarts?" Korzenowski could not conceive of
a way in which Olmy might turn traitor; still, the idea shocked him. "A
warning?"
"Think of it as an overture for peace."
"You're playing at diplomacy with the worst enemies we've ever faced?
Does the president or the head of Thistledown Defense know about
this?"
Olmy shook his head, obviously Unwilling to say more.
"I ask you just one thing. Will this jeopardize the reopening?"
"Solemn oaths are old-fashioned, too. I give you my solemn oath that
this will not jeopardize the re-opening. It may ensure its success."
Korzenowski accepted the memory block, wondering if there were
some quick way he could come to understand its contents. Knowing
Olmy, probably not. "I'll transmit it through the link on one condition
That you explain to me, very soon, what you are up to. What has
really happened to you."
Olmy nodded.
"Where can I contact you.9" Korzenowski said.
"I'll be at the opening of the test link," Olmy said. "Farren Siliom
has
invited me."
"The neo-Oeshel observers want to keep watch on all of us. I'd just as
soon not have an audience."
"Difficult times for all of us," Olmy said.
Korzenowski slipped the block into his robe's pocket. Olmy stretched
out his hand and the Engineer clasped it. Then he left the small
quarters.
Will he transmit the message? the Jart asked as they exited the bore
hole.
"Yes," Olmy answered. "Damn you to whatever Jarts call hell."
The Jart's internal voice seemed tinged with sorrow. We are like
brothers,
yet we do not trust each other.
"Not at all," Olmy said.
I cannot convince you of the urgency o£my mission now.
"You haven't yet."
When your people open the V~y again, ldo not know what they wi#find
· . . but it will not likely be pleasant.
"They're prepared."

25;3 · GREG BEAR

Your passion is curious I can do your kind no harm. You carry the
message of descendant command. That is the message your friend will
transmit--that you are not enemies, must not be enemies

FIFTY-FOUR

Earth

On his last day on Earth, Lanier cut wood for their stove--more a
decorative
item than a necessity---and enjoyed the physical labor. The positioning
of the iron wedge and the solid slam of the sledge. The stacking of
the logs. Solid, muscle-straining, authoritative, ancient rituals.
He watched Karen baking bread, and tasted a slice from a fresh loaf
early in the afternoon.
"Today, I am free of my little helpers," he said, pointing to a red
mark
on a wall calendar. The last of his internal medical remotes would have
dissolved by now.
"You should call Christchurch for another check-up," Karen said,
following him with her green-gold eyes.
"They won't remove the implant," Lanier said. "Until they agree to do
that, I'm boycotting Ras Mishiney's little medical tyranny."
She smiled, obviously not agreeing, but not willing to argue any more.
"Fine bread," he said, putting on his boots, grimacing at the new
muscles he had found chopping wood. "Makes the whole world cheerful
again, just by its smell."
"Old English recipe, with some Human embellishments," Karen said,
removing a second loaf from the oven. "My mother used to call it Four
Unities Bread." She slipped the loaf onto a rack on the the counter.
"Going walking?"
He nodded. "Need to stretch and cool down after all that labor. Want
to go along?"
"Four more loaves," she said, taking his arm and kissing him on the
cheek. She stroked his gray stubble with one hand, solicitous, gentle.
"You go on. I'll have dinner ready when you get back."
He took the short trail behind the house, into an old coniferous forest

ETERNITY · ;353

that thad managed to survive clear-cutting throughout the twentieth
century.
The thick arching ferns and spreading canopy of branches cast
everything into a sun-spotted green gloom. Birds cut devious ttutters
through the undergrowth and high overhead.
He had hiked about two kilometers from the house when a weakness
along his right side became apparent. Walking a few more meters, he
felt
a numbness accompanied by a dull tickle. His armpits became wet with
sweat and he leaned on his walking stick, legs shivering like a sick
dog's.
Finally, he couldn't stand up any longer, and he half-sat, half-fell
onto an
old mossy stump.
Right side. Left brain. A new hemorrhage had occurred in the left side
of his brain.
"I've had the little helpers," he said, his voice high and childlike
with
pain. "They must have fixed me. This shouldn't happen."
A shadow crossed his face. Half bent over, unable to get up, he twisted
his head to one side and saw Pavel Mirsky standing no more than two
meters away.
"Garry. Can you come with me now?"
"I'm not supposed to be sick. The helpers . . ."
"They were not working right, perhaps?"
Fading fast. "I don't know."
"Inferior. Not Talsit. Pseudo-Talsit."
"The medicals should have fixed it."
"Nothing human is perfect." Mirsky sounded very calm, yet he was
doing nothing to help Lanier, not even calling for aid. Lanier had left
his
communicator in the cabin.
There was not much pain now, just the black tunnel, the doors slamming
on memory. "It's now, isn't it? You're here because it's now."
"You'll be downloaded into your implant soon. You don't want that."
"No. But it shouldn't be now."
Mirsky bent on one knee and stared at him intently. '?t is now. You are
dying. You can either die their way--they will give you a new body this
time-, or you can die your own way. In which case, I would like you to
come with me."
"I . . . don't understand." His speech was slurred. He couldn't control
his tongue. This is awful. It was awful before, it's awful now.
"Karen."
Mirsky shook his head sadly. "Come with me, Garry. There's adventure.
And some startling truths. You must decide soon. Very soon." Not fair.
"Call for help. Please."
"I can't. I'm not really here, not physical this time."

254 · GREG BEAR

"Please."

"Decide."

Lanier closed his eyes to avoid the tunnel, but he could not. He hardly
knew who he was now. "All right," he said in a voice so weak it was not
even a whisper.

Something warm pressed behind his eyes, and he felt a sharpnesswnot
painful, just sharp throughout his head. The sharpness pared his
thoughts away layer by layer, and for a brief moment, there was no self
at
all. Still the paring went on, unwinding, unraveling. Then the process
seemed to reverse, and he felt things fall back into place, but with a
different texture underlyingwas if he were a layer of paint on a
canvas,
being peeled from the old surface and pressed onto a new .... Yet there
was no surface, no ground, nothing solid to hang himself on, only the
pattern and some ineffable connection to Mirsky, who no longer looked
like Mirsky, or any human. What he saw now was not light, and what he
heard from Mirsky was not words.

I've been wondering what you really are, he commented without lips to
move. You're not a man at all.

No longer, Mirsky affirmed. I will put something here for Karen, that
she will not have lost everything.

Lanier's body fell to one side, crushing a fern and knocking bark from
the rotten side of the stump. The eyes flickered half-open. The right
hand
twitched and curled sharply, then relaxed. The lungs fluttered and
urine
trickled into the pants. The heart continued to beat for several more
minutes, but then the breathing stopped and the chest was still.

His implant was not empty, but Garry Lanier was dead.

FIFTY-FIVE

Thistledown

The seventh chamber was in shadow, turned away from sun and Earth
and moon, pointing to the stars. Its smooth-cut edges, its vast round
cavity swept clean of debris, were a lesser and emptier black. Only
four

ETERNITY · 265

sets of lights shone on its perimeter, and fitful glows from survey
parties
making final alignments.
The blister capping the bore hole now contained a contingent of VIPs
and guests; the official Hexamon historians, a group Korzenowski was
not unfamiliar with; scientists and technicians who would assume the
maintenance functions once the Way was reconnected and re-opened; the
president and presiding minister; the director of Thistledown; Judith
Hoffman.
Olmy, looking considerably improved.
They all hung in the dim lines of traction fields like spider's prey,
quiet,
expectant.
vis much ceremony as if this were the actual re-opening, Korzenowski
thought, moving to the center of the dome with his extended clavicle.
He
had done this before, centuries ago; opening the Way for the first time
after its creation, setting the Hexamon on a course far more difficult
and
final than any had then suspected.
He had still not made his final decision on whether to transmit Olmy's
signal. Friendship, even personal debt, was not something that could be
weighed against an event as important as this .... The considerations
of
individuals were dwarfed by his larger responsibilities.
And yet, Olmy had never in his life done anything that was not for the
good of the Hexamon. A more heroic and dedicated figure did not exist.
Korzenowski locked himself into the traction field at the center of the
blister and slowly swung the control clavicle into place. The nodes
surrounding
the seventh chamber's cap were slaved to this device. He had
all the capabilities and the entire power of the sixth chamber
machinery
at his disposal. He had months of preparation and tests behind him. His
hands on the clavicle were sure; his mind was more clear and more
sharply focused than it had been in years.
The time had come. Around him, the visitors fell quiet and stopped
picting. ~
Korzenowski closed his eyes and let the clavicle speak to him. The
Thistledown's superspace probes--little more than mathematical
abstractions
given temporary reality by the sixth chamber machinery--spread outward
and inward and in directions that could not be followed by
unaided human brains.
Across the smear of closely related half-realities that surrounded this
universe, across the multiform fifth dimension that separated the great
universes and their different worldlines, the probes went in search of
something artificial, something unlike the precisely organized chaos of
nature. They passed their results back to the clavicle and to Korzenow-

255 · GREG BEAR

ski. He saw a weave of great universes twisting around and even through
each other, coinciding and separating, almost always spreading away
from each other, their fifth dimensional distances increasing.

He knew a kind of ecstasy. The part of him that was Patricia Vasquez
was like the quiet surface of a deep ocean accepting rain; not
responding,
merely receiving, leaving him alone to work his extraordinary
technology.

For a timeless moment, Korzenowski's senses merge with the clavicle,
and he understood with a clarity at once transient and transcendent all
the secrets of this limited fifth-dimensional cross-section.
Korzenowski
was in the state he had experienced only a few times in his past;
theoretical
quibbles about the nature of superspace meant less than nothing. He
knew.

In that place beyond words and experience, he found an anomaly.

Infinitely long, curiously coiled
it is very like a worm
at a number of points, those points being places of deep confusion
known as the geometry stacks; curiously supercoiled within the
boundaries
of one universe, his own; extending like a linear flame to an
unoccupied
and indefinite darkness the shadow of the terminal universe that

would be made and would failm

The Way.

Within those ponderous, fluid yet immutable coils intestines, snakes,
protein molecules, DNAwhe searched for a cauterized end. The search
might have taken centuries; he did not know or care. If the Thistledown
itself had become a cold, sterile hulk in the time it took, he would
not
have been bothered. His goal was clear and overwhelming.

Korzenowski examined his creation more carefully this time, with a
more practiced and mature eye. There were certain features of the Way
he thought might merit future investigation: the structure of the very
twisted and interwoven geometry stacks, the wonderful complex curves
of the Way as it interacted with its parent universe's own enormous
space-time anomalies, avoiding disruption and inevitable destruction.
His
creation had become like a living thing, seeking to continue its
existence
undisturbed . . .

In all the weave of great universes, nowhere could the sensors find any
overall pattern or sense. No intelligence had made all this, nothing
had
willed this totality into being. If a god or gods existed, they had no
place
here; this much he understood beyond any shadow of a doubt, knew in a
way he could never consciously understand or recover.

There was no god of allness and everythingness. No god would have

ETERNITY · 267

desired such a role; for what Korzenowski saw could not have been
created, and would never be destroyed. It was superspace's own Mystery,
ineffable; the sink beyond all mathematics and physics that absorbed
all
G/Sdelian contradictions.
What Korzenowski saw was a fantastic panoply of canvases on which
those things which concern intelligences could be painted, a playground
for ever-evolving and ever-greater intelligences, up to and beyond
gods.
Worlds upon worlds upon worlds without end or beginning.
There would never be true boredom here, or true and permanent
loneliness.
This was All, and it was infinitely more than enough.
Almost as an anticlimax, the Engineer found what he sought, the
cauterized
end of the Way.
He readied the clavicle and powered the stimulators and projectors
surrounding the open seventh chamber. Reflections and distortions of
Earth and Moon and Sun formed slowly spinning halos around the
perimeter.
The distant stars shimmered.
He moved nothing, exerted no force, yet brought the cauterized end of
the Way across vast distances to meet with the broadly distended field
of
the projectors. He gave little thought to anything but the reaches of
superspace; he was in the ecstasy of stretching his abilities to their
greatest
range. Consequences were irrelevant now. The act itself was sufficient.

FIFTY-SIX

Earth

The night sky above Earth filled again with diffuse sheets of light and
the
stars danced. Karen shouted through the punctuated blackness; Lanier
had been gone for seven hours, and she could not call for a search
party.
Power to the cabin was out. More than power was out--no communications
were possible.
She navigated back and forth along the trail, moving through the forest
by the light of an electric lantern, 'flinching at the pyrotechnics
visible
through the canopy overhead. "Garry!" She had an awful knowledge, the
awareness of a missing connection; she equal knew she would not find

358 · GREG BEAR

him alive. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and blinked
to
clear away a sting of terror.
Again Karen shined the lantern beam on the trail. Always, his footsteps
ended here. As if he had been carried away. She had gone farther
three times now, finding no more footsteps, no trace; tear-streaks on
her
face reflected red from the sky as she stared up, grimacing with
frustration.
"Garry~"
His footsteps became confused here, as if he had stumbled around.
Beside the trail, ferns and deep moss hid any spoor. A stump rose from
the foliage. She had passed the stump half a dozen times, pacing,
shining
the lantern at it.
For the first time, she noticed that a long layer of bark had been
freshly
peeled away. She pushed through the ferns and saw a declivity beyond.
Ferns had been crushed on the lip.
Breathing deeply, erratically, she stumbled and slipped down the
shallow
angle and stood in the gully, pausing, not wanting to complete the
act. Lips set tight, she bent over and fingered a broken fern. Then she
used both hands to pull aside the thick fern boughs.
Above the forest canopy, cold sea-green luminosity smeared across the
sky, brighter than her lantern, creeping under every shadow and
flattening
all depth. The outline beyond the ferns was brought into dreamy
relief.
"Garry," she said softly, her face contorted. After a moment in which
she felt as if she were falling down a long, deep well, she touched his
neck
for pulse, found none, then shined her light into half-open,
unresponsive
eyes. Her skin crawled at the coldness of the body's skin, her
husband's
skin, and her breath came in painful hitches, unconscious, sharp,
birdlike
cries lost in the forest. She could not call Christchurch. All
communications
were disturbed by the activity at Thistledown.
She was on her own.
Instinctively. she had done this only once before, but the training had
been thorough--she opened her pocket tool and pulled down the rumpled
jacket collar, rolling the corpse over to expose the neck.

ETERNITY · 359

FIFTY-SEVEN

Halfway

Lanier could not feel his body, or for that matter anything else, but
he
could see in a fashion; seeing without eyes, wrapping himself around
light
and finding images.
He experienced the presence of his teacher, and knew it to be the being
that had masqueraded as or played or returned to the role of Pavel
Mirsky. He mingled with this being, observed its nature and qualities,
and began to model himself after it, gaining more control.
Without speech or words, he asked certain pressing questions left over
from his physical mind, and received the beginnings of answers.
Where are we?
Between the Earth and Thistledown.
It doesn't look like the Earth. Those fingers of light...
We're not seeing with eyes now. You left those behind.
I~s, yes... The taint of his own impatience sent a ripple through him
that was its own punishment. He would soon learn to control these
vestigial
emotions; without a body, they were more than useless, they were
disturbing. The pain is gone. But so is my body.
No need.
Lanier absorbed and processed images of the Earth below. It did not
look at all the same now; it seemed covered with glowing, shifting
strands
that reached out to darkness, twisted, and vanished . . . What are
they?
I can hardly see the planet, there are so many of them.
All those being gathered, large creatures and small. Watch where the
light goes.
It ties into a kind of knot... I can't follow it.
Harvesting the live~ Gathering all the memories and patterns, all the
sensations and recollections.
Souls?
Not as such. There are no ectoplasmic bodies or souls. We are all frail
and temporary, like wilting fiowetx When we are gone, we are truly gone

270 · GREG BEAR

and the universe is empty, desolate, shapeless. Unless at some time
those
with the power decide to arrange a kind of resurrection.
Who's doing this?
The Final Mind.
Our descendants save us?
With reason. The observations of living things are a distillation of
the
universe, a conversion of information to knowledge. All sensation, all
thought, all experience, is gathered, not just at death, but throughout
one5
life. That knowledge is precious; it can be distilled even further and
passed
through the tiniest fissures of connection between this universe, as it
dies,
and the new universe that is born out of it. The distillation imposes
itself on
the new creation, like the passage of seed, guides it away from chaos,
impressing a pattern. The new creation can then develop its own
intelligences,
who will in some way or another repeat the process when their
universe grows old.
Nothing dies?
Everything dies. But that which is special in all of us is saved.., if
the
Final Mind succeeds. You see the urgency of my mission?
Lanier's memories of all the years of pain and death came to him as if
spread out in an album of three-dimensional pictures. Everything dies .
. . But the Final Mind was burning galaxies at the beginning of time,
to
power this effort to recover all that was finest in all the things that
had
ever lived. Not just human beings, but all living things; all things,
at any
rate, that converted information to knowledge, that learned and
observed
and came to know their environment that they might change it. From the
scale of microbes to the living Earth itself, all levels harvested and
encoded,
selected and
Saved.
He savored that thought, tasting it, delighting in it, sobering at what
it
really meant; not the resurrection of the body, not the salvation of
any
individual, but the merging and transcendence of the whole. That which
is best in all of us.
He thought of his father, dying of a cerebral hemorrhage in a parked
car in Florida. Of his mother, dying of cancer in a hospital in Kansas.
Of
his friends and relatives and colleagues and acquaintances instantly
immolated
in the furnace of the Death, that scorching, ashing breath that
lingered so briefly on the Earth. Their achievements, their courage,
their
foolishness and mistakes, their dreams and thoughts, harvested as if a
combine swept over them, threshing their kernels of grain away from the
husks and chaff of death. All the simple people, and the brilliant, the
swift contentious birds of the air and the sheep of the green
cloud-shad-

ET E R N I TY · 271

owed fields, fish and strange beasts of the sea, insects, people,
people,
people, swept up and saved. Was this immortality, to be rendered into
such a form that the Final Mind could remember all that you were?

And not Earth alone, but all the worlds of this galaxy, and all the
worlds of those galaxies filled with life, immense fields of hundreds
of
billions of worlds, some strange beyond imagining. Immense was not the
word for such an undertaking. On any such scale, the fate of the Earth
was less than insignificant, yet the Final Mind was diverse enough,
powerful
enough to reach down to Earth and shape history with such delicacy,
focusing the eviternal on the infinitesimal.

Even in his present form, he found this hard to accept, impossible to

understand.

,4m I being harvested, too? Is that what you're doing now carrying me

away?

We have a different path and a different role.

What are we spirit, energy?

We are like a current using the hidden conduits by which pa~les of
matter and energy speak to each other, tell each other where they are
and
what they are--pathways hidden to humans in our time, but available to
the Final Mind.

Where are we going?

First, to Thistledowr~

FIFTY-EIGHT

Thistledown

The witnesses had gathered in the bore hole, behind Korzenowski's
control
center: the president, presiding minister, the director of Thistledown,
official Hexamon historians, Judith Hoffman, selected senators and
corp-reps.

Directly ahead, through the blister, a circle of night expanded slowly
until it touched the smooth-cut edges of the open seventh chamber,
banishing
the stars. Within the darkness swam afterimages of Sun and Moon
and Earth, growing smaller and dimmer.

272 · GREG BEAR

Korzenowski opened the test link. A pinpoint of milky light glowed in

the center of the dimensionless blackness. Concentrating on the
clavicle,
refusing to be distracted by any display but the abstraction provided
by
the machine, he "felt" through the link and explored what lay beyond.

Vacuum. The nearly empty void surrounding the flaw; the brightness

of a plasma tube.

The frequency of light matched that of the Way's own variety of
plasma tube.

A few meters behind Korzenowski, President Farren Siliom heard the
Engineer whisper, "It's here."

Now Korzenowski broke out of his trance long enough to pict an
instruction to the console hovering beside him. Olmy's mysterious
signal

passed through the open link and down the Way.

"Is everything--" the president began.

The point of light in the darkness ahead of them flashed. Korzenowski

felt a tremor in the clavicle. That tremor seemed to growl throughout
the
Thistledown; warning picts appeared in front of him, telling of
disturbances
in the sixth chamber.

Korzenowski made sure the link had been correctly established. It had.
Something was trying to pass through the link from the other side.
Korzenowski focused all his attention once again on the clavicle. A
force had inserted itself into the link, intent on keeping it open; a
force
stronger and more sophisticated than Korzenowski had imagined possible.

"Trouble," he picted quickly at Farren Siliom.

He tried to sever the link. The point of light remained, even grew in

size. He could not reduce the link; all he could do was expand it, and
he
did not think that was wise. Whatever was on the opposite side
apparently
desired a complete re-opening, a reconnection with Thistledown.

Returning to the clavicle's simulation of the weave between universes,
Korzenowski examined the link from a wide variety of "angles,"
searching
for a weakness, something that in theory had to exist. He could
exploit that weakness to destabilize the link, clamp it down on
whatever
was trying to pass through.

Before he found that weakness, a hideous flare of energy shot from the

point and pierced the traction field blister over the end of the bore
hole.
The blister sparkled and vanished and everything spun in an instant
wind, other traction fields flickering desperately as air rushed out of
the
bore hole.

Farren Siliom grabbed Korzenowski's robe. The flare of energy
whipped this way and that, searing the walls of asteroid rock and
metal,

ET E R N I TY · 273

arcing over the witnesses to touch the lead fiawship and blast its nose
into
shards. The fiawship swung out of its traction dock and smashed against
Korzenowski's spherical personal quarters, squashing it against the
smoking wall.

Korzenowski could not breathe, but that didn't matter. He closed his
eyes and in the expanded instants of implant-augmented time, searched
for the defect he knew must be there.

Farren Siliom lost his grip and shot past Korzenowski. An emergency
traction field net expanded across the gap, lines glowing fiercely as
it tried
to stop the outrush of air and debris and people. The president struck
this
net and spread out against it, arms and legs held fast.

Olmy had fetched up against a pylon and now clung desperately,
watching people fly past. Judith Hoffman, wrapped in a flickering
emergency
environment field, rolled by, and he reached out to grab at her. His
hand was burned by the malfunctioning field, but he caught her and
held,
and the field extended around both of them.

Korzenowski, body spinning like a pennant cut loose in a storm, held
in place only by the traction field connecting the clavicle and the
console,
felt his natural consciousness fade. He immediately switched all
thought
to his implant processors . . . And saw a glimmer of inequity, a hint
of
instability, from a certain "angle" on the link. The implant was wildly
interpreting the flow of data from the clavicle; the defect "smelled"
like
something burnt, and left a sharp resinous taste in his mind.

The rush of wind slowed, the bore hole pressure having dropped almost
to the level of the outer vacuum, but the blaze of energy pouring
through the tiny link with the Way was narrowing, seeming to grow more
specific in its targets. It had not yet, as far as Olmy had been able
to see,
hit any people, concentrating instead on large chunks of machinery, but
now in its curls and convolutions it was coming dangerously close to
the
Engineer.

Korzenowski felt the heat but with eyes tightly closed, did not see the
edge of his robe glow and disintegrate. More traction fields fought to
regain the bore hole's integrity, and emergency fields quickly formed
spheres around the remaining people, but they were still being
disrupted
by the energy pouring out of the link.

The bore hole filled with spinning debris, stunned and unconscious
people, agonized whorls and streamers of smoke; the loose fiawship
rolled and bounced slowly against the wall, threatening to crush the
confused remotes that had gathered at the sides, awaiting instructions
and an end to the chaos.

Korzenowski directed all the energies of the sixth chamber through the

374 · GREG BEAR

clavicle, at the defect in the link, seeking to open a gate there, a
premature
and disruptive gate that would force the link to close or create a
violent crimp in the Way itself.

He wondered for a dark instant if they were facing the power of the
Final Mind, as Mirsky had threatened; his intuition said otherwise.

The link blossomed into redness, like an expanding rose, and the petals
lashed and abraded the cap of the open seventh chamber. He saw all of
this briefly through the clavicle, and then felt an implant overload.
If he
did not disconnect, the implant--and part of his natural mind, as
well--would
probably be erased.

He removed his hands from the clavicle, but the work was already
done.

The rose shrank against the blackness and stars. The blaze of energy
vanished. The point of light, dimming rapidly, winked out.

Air stopped its painful rush past the Engineer. The traction fields
held,
and somewhere in the bore hole far behind, huge pumps began to replace
the air lost in the past few .

How long had it been? Korzenowski queried his implant.

Twenty seconds. Only twenty seconds.

Olmy made sure the unconscious Hoffman was not seriously injured,
then pitted instructions for the environment field to separate. He
tracted
alone toward the console and Korzenowski. The Engineer steadied himself
against his own emergency field, sucking in the thin air with painful
gasps.

"What happened?" Olmy asked.

The Jart within him supplied the answer: ~4utomatic defense&

"I was about to ask you that," Korzenowski said. "Your signal . . ."
He stopped and looked around. "How many people lost? Where's the
president?"

Olmy looked through the transparent field now sealing the northern
end of the bore hole. He could see a few twinkling bright objects
flying
outward on trajectories away from the seventh chamber and Thistledown.
The traction field holding Farren Siliom had failed. Remotes were

already speeding out to capture them.

"He's out there," Olmy said.

Korzenowski curled up in exhaustion and misery, collapsing like a
pricked balloon.

"I think," Olmy said, "that most of the dead are neo-Geshels . .
they all have implants."

"Disaster," Korzenowski said, shaking his head forlornly. "Was it
what Mirsky warned us about?"

ET E R N I TY · 275

"I don't think so," Olmy said.

"Jarts, then."

Olmy took hold of Korzenowski's arm and gently urged him away
from the clavicle. "Most likely," he said softly. "Come with me." The
Jart did not attempt to control his actions; Korzenowski was as
important
to it as to Olmy.

The Engineer was almost babbling. "They tried to force the link to

open completely. They want to get at us. They want to destroy us."
Olmy asked the Jart if that was what they wanted.

Unless and until they receive the signal, that is almost certainly
their
goal.

The screams and groans within the bore hole subsided as medical
remotes began to issue from the staging areas in the walls. Olmy guided
his mentor toward a hatch. "We're going to have to talk," he said. "I
have some things to explain."

He did not know whether he had spoken the words voluntarily, or at
the Jart's command. Did it matter?

The message had been sent. Something had happened that could have
destroyed the seventh chamber, perhaps the asteroid. The connection was
not irrefutable, but it was strong. . .

Olmy's failure was bearing its first fruit.

FIFTY-NINE

Thistledown City

In the Nexus chamber~, the Engineer stood before the armillary sphere
of
testimony. Presiding Minister Dris Sandys occupied his Nexus seat, to
one side of the president's empty seat. The P.M. escaped any serious
injury.

Judith Hoffman, bruised and exhausted from the ordeal in the bore
hole, sat in a special witness seat, along with the others who had
escaped
major harm. The rest of the Nexus chamber was empty; this was a matter
for the presiding minister alone, as acting president, under the
Emergency
rules.

275 · GREG BEAR

Olmy sat beside Judith Hoffman. The Jart was quiet within him; alert,
but not interfering.

The P.M. requested that status reports on the dead and injured be
projected before the chamber.

"The president," he said dryly, "is being reincarnated now. There are a
total of seven dead and nine seriously injured, including the two
official
historians, two corpreps, one senator, and the director of Thistledown.
We haven't suffered such losses since the Sundering. Fortunately, all
are
equipped with implants, and are expected to survive. Can you tell us
what happened, Ser Korzenowski?"

The Engineer glanced at Olmy. There had been no time for the
conversation
Olmy had promised; both had been taken away by medical
remotes for examination upon slipping into the staging area. They had
not been alone since.

"I opened a test link with the Way. Something tried to pass through

the link, and interfered with my attempt to close it."
"Do you have any idea what the something was?"
"A Jart weapon, I presume," Korzenowski said.

The presiding minister stared at him. "Is this merely a guess?"

"Vigilant Jarts, waiting for just such an opportunity," Korzenowski
said. "I don't know what else it could be."

The presiding minister asked if the representatives of the Thistledown
Defense Forces agreed. They did; there was certainly no evidence to the
contrary.

"Will it be possible to open another test link and learn for certain?"
"Yes," Korzenowski said. "I can open an off-center link, in effect open
a gate one hundred kilometers or so beyond the closed end of the Way.
With proper shields and safeguards, we can make a reconnaissance and

close the gate with little chance of detection."

"How little?" the presiding minister asked.

"Little enough," Korzenowski said. "But I recommend Thistledown
be evacuated, all but for essential personnel and defense forces."

The presiding minister stared grimly at him. "That would be a
horrendous
task."

"It is essential," the head of the defense forces said. "If we are
going to
reclaim the Way territories and establish a beachhead, there must be a
buffer between the battle and our civilians."

"What sort of buffer do you contemplate?"

"All civilians must be sent to the orbiting precincts or Earth."

"Do you advocate removing just corporeals?"

"No, sir," the head replied. "We advocate removing all corporeals, all

ETERNITY · 277