Destination: Void

His words aroused a vague sense of anger in Prudence. He kept skirting the... what was that thought?

"Would it have the illusion that it's the center of the universe?" Timberlake asked.

"No." Bickel shook his head, remembering: "The universe has no center." That's what it had said to him.

This was a coding problem contained in the concept of you and the concept of...f identity. Bickel nodded to himself. Are you aware? Am I aware? He looked at the others.

The object and its surround.

A moment of intense despair overcame him. He felt like groaning.

"Life as we know it," Timberlake said, "started evolving some three thousand million years ago. When it got to a certain point, then consciousness appeared. Before that, there was no consciousness... at least in our life form. Consciousness comes out of that unconscious sea of evolution." He looked at Bickel. "It exists right now immersed in that universal sea of unconsciousness."

As though Timberlake's words had released a dam, Prudence remembered the train of thought so urgent it had forced her to abandon her post to go in search of Bickel.

Determinism at work in a sea of indeterminism! And she held the mathematical key to the problem. That was the train of thought. She had been trying to narrow down a new definition, mathematically stated, of quantum probability. She had sensed a three-dimensional grid forming in her awareness and a probing beam of consciousness focusing into that grid.

Again, she felt that enormous increment of consciousness and the memory of that sudden knowledge - she had pushed her body's chemistry beyond a balance point. She remembered how the darkness had engulfed her just as the mathematical beauty, the simplicity of the thought had spread itself out in her mind.

Everything depended on the origins of impulses and the reflection of them. It was a field of reflections - and this held the key to the sensation of consciousness.

We construct consciousness this way.

Our bodies take us part of the way and then the identity takes over.

Identity... an illusion... an assumption.

But that was just a working tool... like a navigator assuming his position on a boundless sea... assuming his position on a chart - an assumption on an assumption, symbol of symbols. Assuming such a position, even assuming a position which he knew to be wrong, the navigator could work his way mathematically to a close approximation of his correct position.

Approximation.

Particles or waves - it was not important which, but it was important whether the assumption worked.

Her entire conceptual process took no more than an eye blink of time but it produced a flare of awareness which filled her with energy.

There was no doubt at all where this flare of awareness pointed - at the AAT system. For a moment, she held the entire complex of the AAT system in her mind, manipulating the continuous interlocking pattern with her symbological grid. It was so simple. The AAT was a four-dimensional continuum, a piece of space-time geometry subject to considerations of curvature, duration-over-distance and particle/wave transfer through a multiplicity of sensor-traverse lines.

To the human nervous system, an instrument designed for the job, nothing could be simpler than visualizing and manipulating such a four-dimensional spiderweb - once the nature of the spiderweb was understood.

"John," she said, "the Ox isn't the instrument of consciousness; it's the AAT, the manipulator of symbols. The Ox circuits are merely something this manipulator can use to stand up tall, to know its own dimensions."

"The object and its surround," Bickel whispered. "Subject and background, grid and map... consciousness and unconsciousness!"

"The Ox is the unconscious component," she said, "a machine for transferring energy."

And, still within this heightened awareness, she explained the mathematical clues that had led her to this point.

"A matrix system," Bickel said, remembering his own plunge into this way of attacking the problem, and the blaze of consciousness which that plunge had whipped up. "And submatrices and sub-submatrices without end."

Flattery stood up, seeing where these thoughts must lead, dreading the moment of action to come. He looked down at Prudence seated on the deck, seeing her flushed cheeks, the glitter in her eyes.

"And where does this AAT-cum-Ox stand?" Flattery asked. "Have you thought of that?"

Prudence met his stare, understanding now why their hyb tanks had been filled with colonists. "The colonists," she said, nodding. "A field of unconsciousness from which any unconscious can draw...round that sustains and buoys - and the sleeping colonists provide it."

Flattery shook his head, feeling angry, confused.

Bickel stared beyond Prue, absorbing her words. Ideas merged and fitting - orders evolved in his awareness. This ship had been armed, maneuvered, aimed and fired. He remembered Hempstead: gnome-wise face, eyes glittering, and that compelling voice saying: "What matters most is the search itself. This is more important than the searchers. Consciousness must dream, it must have a dreaming ground - and, dreaming, must invoke ever new dreams."

"Knowledge is pitiless," Bickel said.

Prudence ignored him, keeping her attention on Flattery, aware of the psychiatrist-chaplain's confusion. "Don't you see it, Raj? To separate subject from object there has to be a background of some kind. You have to be able to see it against something. What's the background for consciousness? Unconsciousness."

"Zombies," Bickel said. "Remember, Raj? You called us zombies. And why not? We've existed for most of our lives in a state of light hypnosis."

Flattery knew Bickel had said something, but the words refused to link in any understandable form. It was as though Bickel had said: "Hop limbo promise the insect watering class to be erected to a first behavior preserve." The words trailed off through his mind as though they had been flashed in front of his awareness to screen him from something else.

From what?

A profound silence filled Com-central, broken by the sound of Prudence shifting her position on the deck.

Bickel felt himself go as calm as that silence, as though some other self had waited for that silence to take the reins. The sensation lasted for a single heartbeat and expanded into a sense of well-being, a relaxed poise that illuminated everything around him. It was as if one universe had been substituted for another, as if a sensory amplification of enormous intensity had been turned on his universe.

He saw the stark unconsciousness in Flattery's face, in Timberlake's - and the semi-consciousness of Prudence.

Zombies, he thought.

"Raj, you called us zombies," Bickel repeated. "If we were lightly hypnotized we'd appear partially dead to someone in a higher state of consciousness."

"Do you have to mumble?" Timberlake demanded.

Flattery glared at Bickel. He felt that the man was using real words and that communication was intended, but all the meanings slipped and slithered through his mind without making co

Prudence felt Bickel's words lifting her. There came an instant in which the universe turned upon one still point that was herself. The feeling shifted: self no longer was confined within her. As she gave up the self, clarity came. Flattery's words returned to her: "There's nothing concerning ourselves about which we can be truly objective except our physical responses."

The chemical experiments on her own body had never offered a real chance to solve their problem, but they had provided a ground for understanding her own identity. The hope of more had been illusory... because the experiments could not be conducted simultaneously on every occupant of the Tin Egg - their isolated world.