Transcendence

Chapter Twenty-Four

The definition of reality; the meaning of existence; the nature of the universe.

The philosophies of the spiral arm on these subjects were at least as numerous and diverse as the intelligences who populated it. They ranged from the Inverse Platonism of Teufel — What you see is all there is, and maybe a bit more — to the Radical Pragmatism of the Tristan free-space Manticore — Reality is whatever I decide it should be — all the way to the Dictum of Inseparability espoused by the hive-mind of Decantil Myrmecons — The Universe exists as a whole, but it is meaningless to speak of the function of individual components.

Darya had no doubts about her own view: The universe was real, and anyone who believed otherwise needed a brain tune-up. There certainly was an objective reality.

But could that reality ever be comprehended by a living, organic being, one whose intelligence and logical faculties had to operate in the middle of a raging cauldron of glands and hormones and rampant neurotransmitters?

That was a far more subtle question. Darya herself was inclined to answer no. If one wanted a good example, all one had to do was examine recent events.

Look at yesterday. On her return to the Erebus from the surface of Genizee, the objective universe had been an old and worn-down and shabby place, a weary present grinding its way forward into a pointless future. She had been swept by the random tides of exhaustion from confusion to anger to total languid indifference.

And now, one day later? Twelve hours of forty-fathom slumber had pumped ichor into her veins. She had followed that with a meal big enough to stun a Bolingbroke giant, and discovered that the universe had been remade while she slept. It gleamed and glowed now like the lost fire-treasure of Jesteen.

And she glowed with it.

The Erebus was winding its way slowly and quietly out of the depths of the Torvil Anfract. Darya sat knee to knee in silent companionship with Hans Rebka, staring at the panorama beyond the hulk of the ship. He was more relaxed than she had ever seen him. The view from the observation bubble helped. It was never the same for two seconds: now it showed a lurid sea of smoky red, lit by the sputtering pinwheel fireworks of tiny spiral galaxies rotating a million billion times too fast to be real; a few moments later all was impenetrable blackness, darkness visible. But by then touch had substituted for vision. The ship moved through the abyss with a shuddering irregular slither that created a tremor in Darya from hips to navel. An invisible something caressed her skin — caressed her inside her skin, with the most delicate and knowing of sensual fingers.

“More macroscopic quantum states,” Hans Rebka said lazily. He waved his hand at a Brownian-movement monitor. “But they’re getting smaller. Another few minutes and we’ll be back to normal scale.”

“Mmmph.” The intellectual part of Darya nodded and tried to look serious. The idiot rest of her gri

“And according to Dulcimer’s flight plan,” Rebka continued, “it’s the last time we’ll meet macro-states. Another few minutes and Graves should flip right back to normal. He’s feeling better already, just knowing what it is that’s wrong with him.”

“Ummm.” If you were to run tourist ships out to this part of the Anfract, and keep them here for a few hours — assuming that anyone could stand such a wonderful feeling for so long — you could make your fortune. And maybe you could be on the ship yourself, for every trip.

“Hey.” He was staring at her. “What are you looking so pleased about? I thought you’d feel down today, but you’re wall-to-wall grin.”

“Yeah.” Darya gazed into his eyes and amended her last thought. He wasn’t feeling it. You would run ships of female tourists out here.

But the tingle inside her was fading, and at last she could speak. “Why shouldn’t I grin? We found the Zardalu, we all escaped from Genizee, we’ve got the live infant as evidence for the Council, and we’re on the way home. Don’t we have a right to smile?”

“We do. Graves and Tally and me do. You don’t.”

“Hans, if you’re going to start that nonsense again about me and Louis Nenda… he was only trying to explain what they were going to do with the Indulgence, I’m sure he was. And then when I wouldn’t listen to him, he put his hand on—”

“That’s not a problem anymore. We know what happened to the Indulgence. While you were snoring your head off, Kallik located a flight plan in a locked file in the Erebus’s backup computer. Nenda and Atvar H’sial are heading for Glister and Nenda’s old ship.”

That stopped Darya for a moment. She had been hoping to return to Glister herself in the near future, but it was not the right time to mention it. “Well, if you think that I’m smiling because Nenda and I had been—”

“Haven’t thought about that all day.”

He had, though, Darya was sure of it — he had answered much too fast. She was getting to know Hans Rebka better than she had ever known anyone.

“I’m not worrying about you and Nenda, or you and anyone.” His face was no longer lazy or lacking emotion. “I’m worrying about you, and only you. You didn’t come here to find the Zardalu, I know that.”

“I came to be with you.”

“Nuts. Maybe a little bit of that, and I’d like to think so. But mainly you came to find the Builders.”

So she had! It was hard to remember it that way now, but he had pinpointed her original motives for leaving Sentinel Gate. Whether she liked it or not, he was getting to know her, too, better than anyone had ever known her. The flow through the empathy pipe ran both ways. It had been open for only a year. How well would they know each other in a century?

“And now,” he was continuing, “you’re going home with-out a thing.”

“Nonsense! I have a new artifact to think about. An amazing one. The Torvil Anfract is a Builder creation, the strangest we’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe. But can I quote what a certain professor told me, back on Sentinel Gate? ‘There was nothing more interesting in my life than Builder artifacts — so long as the Builders remained hidden. But once you meet the Builders’ sentient constructs, and think you have a chance to find the Builders themselves, why, the past is irrelevant. artifacts can’t compete.’ Remember who said that?”

He was not expecting an answer. Darya had one, but she did not offer it. Instead she looked again out of the observation bubble. In the sky outside, the blackness was breaking to a scatter of faint light. A view of the spiral arm was coming into view; the real spiral arm, as it ought to look, undistorted by singularity sheets or quantum speckle or Torvil chimeras. They must be almost out of the Anfract.

“But you’re no closer to the Builders now than you were a year ago,” Hans went on. “Farther away, in some ways. When we were dealing with the Builder constructs on Glister and Serenity, you thought that The-One-Who-Waits and Speaker-Between held the key to the exact plans and intentions of the Builders. Now we find that Guardian and World-Keeper agree completely with each other — but they don’t agree with the other constructs at all. It’s a mess and it’s a muddle, and you have to be disappointed and miserable.”

Darya didn’t feel the least bit miserable or disappointed. She had questions, scores of them, but that was what the world was all about.

She smiled fondly at Hans Rebka — or was she just smiling at the warm feeling inside her? Surely a bit of both. “Of course Guardian and World-Keeper agree with each other. You’d expect them to — because they are the same entity. They are one construct existing in a mixed quantum state, just the way J’merlia existed. But in their case, it’s permanent.” And then, while Hans jerked his head back and stared along his nose at her in astonishment, she went on. “Hans, I’ve learned more about Builders and constructs in the past year than anyone has ever known. And you know what? Every new piece of information has made things more puzzling. So here’s the central question: If all the constructs are earnest and industrious and incapable of lying, and if they are all busy carrying out the agenda of their creators, then why is everything so confusing?”