Battlemind (42 page)

The tapestry of Mind in the two galaxies numbered many, many trillions. Astonishingly, the downloaded personalities outnumbered the organics by a factor of hundreds of millions to one, inhabiting, for the most part, whole virtual universes; and all, by virtue of being part of the Grand Associative, were part of the Galactic Mind.

“Someone once suggested that the evolution of intelligence was the way the universe learned about itself,”
the Voice said.
“That was truer than anyone of that age realized. We exist as multiple layers of emergent consciousness. Cells joined to shape brains, and consciousness. Billions of brains joined, in superconsciousness. And beyond that…”

Dev saw. There could be no end, literally. Superconsciousnesses like the Overmind, but larger and more organized, joined a hundred billion others like itself across a galaxy, giving rise to a new transcendent hierarchy of intelligence.

An intelligence fit for a galaxy.…

And there were hundreds of billions of galaxies scattered across the universe. More, quantum theory demanded an infinity of universes, and these, too, were within the reach of Mind.

Senses reeling, the Devgestalt pulled back from that whirling, ever-deepening vista of Mind pervading a universe… and beyond, to a universe of universes.

My God in heaven.…
Dev’s thought was reverent. Almost worshipful. The sheer, perfect wonder of it all.…

“Not quite,”
the entity said, answering the unvoiced thought,
“Not God. There are quite a few things beyond our scope at present, if only because the curvature of the universe limits direct observation of all space and all time. Complete omniscience will come with time, another few tens of billion of years, perhaps. I expect that by then we’ll have evolved into something more…
elegant
than what you sense here.

“You will want us to return you to your own place and time.…”

“You… can do that?”

“Of course. Even in your epoch, you have already learned the truism that time and space are interchangeable. You may remain if you wish, but…”
Abruptly, the other Dev grinned, a frighteningly
human
expression.
“Remember that this is the second time I’ve taken part in this conversation.

Dev was thunderstruck. Until that moment, he’d assumed that the other Dev was a copy of himself, created on the spur of the moment to facilitate conversation. Now he realized that he was literally talking to himself… across a gulf of four thousand million years.

The intimation of his own survival, in any form, down through such vistas of time, left him reeling.

“Wait!” The attainment of all the GEF had been working for had left him in a daze. It took agonizingly long milliseconds, but somehow the Devgestalt pulled itself together. “Wait! If you’re me… you must know we came here to find out how to defeat the Web. Or at least, to learn what mistakes to avoid. I… I sensed the Web as a part of the Galactic Associative. What happened? What happened to the Web? How did we beat it?”

The entity was silent for a long moment, and Dev had the impression it was considering whether or not to tell him.

But surely that basic decision had already been made? Four billion years ago, the struggle between Web and human must have been resolved, and this fantastic intelligence surrounding and tilling the Haven asteroid must know how it had happened.

On the other hand, a terrible fear was growing in the back of Dev’s mind. The Web was as much a part of the Galactic Associate as Humanity was. Besides, Mind on such a colossal scale could not possibly care what happened to primitives—any more than a human might care what happened to one particular amoeba in a stagnant pond.

“You’re quite wrong there,”
the Voice said, again addressing unspoken thoughts.
“The Overmind had more pressing concerns than the problems of the, to it, insignificant cells that constituted its being. An Associative of Overminds, however, is complex enough to be concerned with each constituent cell within its body, no matter where it is in space, no matter where in time.”

“You don’t want to create a paradox by helping us.…”

“Not at all. There is no paradox, when each decision made branches to new infinities. The Associative’s richness and vitality lies in its diversity. That diversity includes myriad alternate realities.

“In fact, the Web of your epoch is a primitive, near-mindless thing, conscious only of its own existence. Its immediate reaction to encounters with other intelligences is to eliminate them as possible competitors. Its directives are simple: utilize all available resources to perpetuate Self, and protect Self by eliminating all rivals, a strategy that is decidedly contrary to our imperative of diversity and communication, In your future, the Web will learn theadvantages of symbiotic cooperation, but it will require outside help to achieve that understanding. In essence, it needs to be reprogrammed.”

“But… how…?”

“The organisms you call Naga were created by the Web, eons before your own time.”

“That’s right. We learned they were sent out like scouts, to begin converting worlds to the Web’s use.”

“But the Web no longer recognizes the Naga as Self. However, the Naga are still the key to communications with the Web, as they have been the key to communicating with the other species you’ve encountered. The Web did not understand that even machine organisms can evolve, given the pressures of natural selection and the possibility of mutation through radiation, self-programming, and age. Sometime, in the remote past, a key segment of coded communications protocol that was part of every Naga cell was lost, possibly because the Naga themselves didn’t remember what it was for and discarded it as inefficient. Program a Naga fragment with the missing code, and with the information you wish to convey to the Web. Allow it to be assimilated. You’ll get your message across.…
”

Dev was about to ask for the missing code but sensed the being was not going to help to that extent. Perhaps there were rules to the cosmic order that prohibited too glaring an intercession across the eons. It didn’t matter, in any case, for he’d already seen how the critical piece of information could be won. There were millions of inert but intact Web devices adrift both near Earth and at Nova Aquila. A Naga fragment could easily absorb and pattern the program activating a Web machine, isolate the communications protocols, compare them with its own point by point, and determine what was different.

Dev felt mildly annoyed with himself at that; he should have seen it as the solution all along.…

There was not the least sensation of motion. One instant, Haven, the two DalRiss craft, and the two Confederation vessels were adrift between the galaxies. The next, they were once more at Nova Aquila, the Stargate whirling in the distance and, nearby, the Imperial squadron of Admiral Hideshi. The other Confederation ships were visible in the distance, fleeing at high-boost.

They’d been returned to the place they’d departed from, and within minutes of the time they’d left. Only then did Dev realize he’d forgotten to ask what they could do about the Empire. In the same instant, he knew what the answer would have been. If the
Web
was a part of the Galactic Mind four billion years hence, what did that say about the essential unity of Man? On a cosmic scale, differences in cultures, in perceptions, in language, in detail of body or dress or thought, all were lost before the simple perception that Mind was all that mattered.

The Imperial warships had positioned themselves near the end of the Nova Aquila Stargate where One-GEF had vanished some minutes before, hunting dogs waiting for the rabbit to reemerge from the hole.

Within the Haven Mind was incalculable power. Power to easily break computer security codes, hunt down frequencies, brush aside access blocks. The gestalt could penetrate the Imperial squadron’s computers within milliseconds, take them over, and do whatever was needed to cripple or destroy the ships. He remembered the race to destroy the
Hoshiryu,
falling from the skies over Singapore, and realized that the same task, with the same result, could be accomplished now without effort, in the blink of an eye.

“What will we do?” Kara asked.

Dev smiled. “We call them up,” he said, “and we
talk.”

Epilogue

For now, at least, the truce was holding.

The appearance in the Imperial squadron’s rear of the Haven Planetoid, accompanied by two DalRiss city ships, a ryu-class carrier, and the
Gauss,
along with five squadrons of Confederation warflyers, had given Admiral Hideshi pause. A brief demonstration on Dev’s part, crashing the weapons and fire-control AIs aboard the
Soraryu,
had turned pause into an indefinite stay of execution… and a truce. It wasn’t, necessarily, the end of the Imperial-Confederation war. It might, for all any of them knew, be only the beginning. But for the moment, both sides were talking,
communicating,
and while they were talking, they weren’t killing one another.

It was a start.

It was a start, too, when a number of Web kickers were reactivated through a link-up with the Naga core of the Haven Planetoid. A few seconds of analysis provided the missing code string in the Naga communications protocol; the strange entities really were organic computers, with as literal and as straightforward an understanding of the universe as any of that breed. Quite possibly, they could have provided the answer all along, if anyone had been able to ask the proper questions.

Soon, the Haven Planetoid would depart for the Galactic Core. The Devgestalt would encounter the Web, use the code sequence, and allow itself to be assimilated by the Web.

“I don’t want you to go,” Katya told him. They were meeting a final time in the virtual simulation of Cascadia, Dev and Katya, Vic, Kara, Daren and Taki. An extended, if somewhat unorthodox family. “None of us do.”

“I’m not leaving, not really,” Dev replied. “There are enough copies of myself in the Net now, that you’ll still have me around no matter what happens at the Core.”

“Those are copies.…”

“I’m
a copy,” Dev reminded her. “The original Dev died a long time ago. Remember? Besides, if there’s no difference between a copy and the original, down to the quantum scale, they
are
the same.”

“He knows he survives in the future,” Kara said. “We
all
do, though I’m not sure I see how.”

“You know,” Vic said, “there’s a religion growing up in some parts of the Confederation. I think in the Empire as well. It holds that the Overmind will somehow absorb everyone when they die, make them part of itself. And that it will eventually move throughout time, taking to itself the minds, the souls, if you will, of everyone who has ever lived or ever
will
live. A rational basis for a belief in God.”

“I never believed in God,” Daren said thoughtfully. “But if there’s no difference between the copy and the idea it was taken from…”

“I think we’ve glimpsed a tiny, tiny shred of one of the great, driving truths of human existence,” Dev told them. “It hinges on the old idea that death need not be an end, but a kind of graduation. I don’t know if we’ve really seen the answer to that. My survival as a download doesn’t guarantee the same for everyone. But it’s comforting to know we
might
have touched the answer to a very, very old and human question.”

“A lot of people are turning to downloads as a way to beat death,” Taki pointed out. “And we saw in the Galactic Associative that the downloads are going to outnumber the organics some day. Maybe the new religion has something to it.”

“I don’t hold much with religions,” Katya said. “In the long run, they’re human institutions for dealing with human problems. But it’s going to be fun to see if there’s a reality behind this one.”

“By the way.” Dev said, looking at Kara. “I understand the ranks of the downloaded lost a couple the other day. How are they?”

She grinned. “Will Daniels is back on active duty. Ran is still recovering, but they tell me he’s going to be okay. It was your patterning technique that did it, though. Thanks.…”

With a potentially infinite number of duplications possible, the techs working with Ran Ferris and Willis Daniels and a number of other RDTS victims had been able to try numerous techniques for reinstalling the mental software that were downloaded minds in the wetware-hardware of the patients’ brains. In fact, copies of both men remained on the Net; there was talk now that, just as everyone had a Companion, everyone might soon have a downloaded copy of himself existing on the Net, a kind of alter ego to conduct research, extend human experience… and even serve as a backup copy in the case of the original’s death.

Dev had already been exploring numerous possibilities there, working with both AIs and human, DalRiss, and Gr’tak experts in designing the shape of the new Net.

A Net that, one day, would evolve into the Associative he’d met in the distant future.

The research had been intriguing to Dev, in particular. Cloned bodies—or even new generations of hubots—offered the hope that one day he would be able to reinstall himself in a flesh-and-blood body. When he did so, though, it would be in a world so transformed by the power and the scope of Net consciousness that it would, likely, be unrecognizable to anyone alive now. Dev was more than willing to concede that he might not mind remaining immortal after all.…

“When are you going?” Katya asked. “To the Core, I mean.”

“As fast as we can arrange it, Mums,” Kara replied. “Those gokking machines came too damned close to frying Earth. We’re going to have to do something about them
fast…
before they try again.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Kara,” Dev said, letting his image settle back in the warm comfort of the electronic world about him. “In fact, we have all the time in the universe.”

TERMINOLOGY AND GLOSSARY