Further: Beyond the Threshold (12 page)

That night, when I could stay awake no longer, we returned to Earth and the diamond house, and I slept in the enormous bed, the first time I’d closed my eyes since waking up in the conference room in Pethesilea.

My sleep was fitful, plagued by unsettling dreams. Elements of the holographic drama I’d watched with the Anachronists were still fresh in my thoughts, and so I dreamed that Amelia and I were alone on
Wayfarer One
, which in some way was also my bedroom in my parents’ house in Bangalore. I’m not sure what became of the other crewmembers, but in the logic of dreams, I just accepted that they’d gone away somewhere else. Amelia kept trying to tell me something very important, but every time she opened her mouth, strange words came out, and I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. Finally, the ship began to descend toward a blue-green planet, and I woke just before impact.

For a brief moment, in the echoing darkness of the immense room, I couldn’t remember where I was, and for an instant thought that I was back in the coffin sleeper on
Wayfarer One
and that all I’d experienced of the Entelechy had been a cryogenic dream. Then I felt the arthritic ache of my knuckles and wrist, and knew I wouldn’t be so lucky as that.

It had been no accident that the crew of
Wayfarer One
was made up of three men and three women. There was always the chance that ours would be a one-way mission, and if circumstances demanded, and the environment permitted, we were ordered to pair off and populate. We’d never spoken openly about who would be paired with whom, of course, but in the weeks and months before launch, I couldn’t help but imagine being stranded on an uninhabited, idyllic world in orbit around Alpha Centauri B, with me as a new Adam and Amelia as my Eve.

The future’s fantasies mocked those idle imaginings, and I resented them for it.

I must have drifted back to sleep, but if I dreamed again, I don’t remember it. I woke, hours later, discomfited and cramped.

When I began to move, the room was immediately bathed in light, and I climbed off the high bed and onto the floor, stretching old and reluctant muscles. Taking a few deep breaths, I stood straight, with my feet together, hands palm to palm near my chest, the first position of the Surya Namaskar. Moving ritually through each position of the yoga asana, my breath carefully regulated with pranayama exercises, I greeted the day.

When I had finished, I bathed in the facilities provided, a tub so large I could almost have swum laps in it. A full grooming kit had been provided, and I happily scrapped the wispy whiskers from my chin with a razor and managed to trim my hair into something resembling a regulation cut. Afterward, I dried off and dressed in a simple pair of black pants and the shirt and shoes I’d worn the day before and went out into the main room to find the escort waiting for me, perched in the same position he’d occupied when I’d gone off to bed.

“Good morning, sir,” the silver eagle said cheerfully.

“You haven’t sat there all night, have you?”

“Oh, no, sir.” The escort shook its beak from side to side. “I’ve spent the evening hours flying, and I must say that I find the experience of prolonged flight an extremely energizing one. But I am glad to see you awake, sir. You have a visitor waiting for you in the sitting room.”

I glanced around the large room, replete with chairs and sofas. Wasn’t
this
the sitting room? How big
was
this house, anyway?

“Well, lead on,” I said as the escort took wing.

As the escort led the way to a corner of the house I’d not yet visited, I caught a strange scent in the air. It was oddly familiar, bringing to mind market stalls in the Merkato in Addis Ababa, in the shadow of the Grand Anwar Mosque. Rounding the corner into the large sitting room, I recognized the smell—tobacco smoke.

A chimpanzee in a velvet jacket and cravat sat in a large reclining chair, a lit cigar in one hand and a martini glass in the other, his feet up. On the floor beside the chair sat a silver box about the size of a briefcase.

“I have to hand it to you, Captain Stone,” the escort translated as the chimpanzee motioned with the glass. “I had your fabricant produce a typical Information Age intoxicant, and I must say that you ancients certainly knew how to make a cocktail.”

“If I run into any cryogenically preserved bartenders I’ll be sure to let them know,” I said. The escort hopped from my shoulder onto the arm of a nearby couch, and I took a seat, unsure if this was the same chimpanzee I’d met earlier. “Now, um, Maruti Sun…?” I trailed off, unable to remember the rest of it.

“Maruti Sun Ghekre,” the chimpanzee said, opening its mouth wide with lips covering top and bottom teeth, apparently a chimpanzee equivalent of a smile. “But call me Maruti, please. Maruti Sun Ghekre is my father.”

My expression must have looked at least half as confused as I felt, as the chimpanzee quickly added, “Literally, that is. I’m the ninth to carry the name, he’s the eighth, but when people use my full name, I keep turning around expecting the old chimp to be lurking around somewhere.” He set the glass down on the chair’s arm and waved behind him absently.

I nodded. “Ri-ight. I believe I’ve heard the sentiment expressed before.”

“Ah, good,” Maruti said, clamping the cigar between his teeth and clapping his hands. “I hadn’t heard that the ancients were completely incapable of appreciating humor, but then, history doesn’t record every detail, does it?”

“I suppose not.” I put my hands on my knees and leaned forward. “Now…Maruti…is there something I can do for you?”

“Do for me?” Maruti brandished the cigar, hooting. “Do for
me
? I shouldn’t think so. Captain Stone, it’s more what I can do for
you
.” The chimpanzee reached into the pocket of his velvet jacket and withdrew a small, slender case. “I’ve brought with me the equipment I need to get you fixed up, so if you’ve had a chance to think it over, we can get started.”

As the escort translated, the chimpanzee cast frustrated glares at the silver eagle.

“Fixed up?” I asked when the escort had finished.

“Yes. Well, I’ll install an interlink, for one. It’s a relatively simple procedure, but I’d like to do a full medical on you while I’m at it.”

I sat back, uneasy at the mention of any “procedure.”

“You mentioned an ‘interlink’ before, I believe,” I said, and then glanced to the escort, “and you said something about it when discussing translations. What is it, exactly?”

“In simplest terms,” the escort answered, “an interlink is a small computer and transceiver that acts as both a communicator and a running on-site backup of the individual’s mind.”

“Wait a second,” I said, raising my hands in an instinctive defensive posture. “Did you say
backup
?”

“Of course I did,” Maruti said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “You’ve got to store it somewhere, don’t you? In anthropoids like you and me, the interlink implant is positioned just anterior of the pineal gland, in the groove between the two thalami.” The chimp reached up and tapped at the base of his skull with a hairy finger. “The thalami function as relay stations for nerve impulses carrying sensory information to the brain, right? They receive sensory inputs and inputs from other parts of the brain, and determine which of these signals goes on to the cerebral cortex. The thinking meat, in other words.”

“And since the interlink inserts itself into the cortico-thalamo-cortical recurrent loops, intercepting and interpreting sensory input, modifying and modulating as appropriate,” the escort added, “it is capable of capturing a still image of the mind at any given moment. In the event of death, this small, dark sphere, about as far across as the tip of your little finger, can provide the template to bring them back in another body, or in virtuo.”

“Unless the black ball can’t be retrieved,” Maruti said, scowling, “in which case the individual is just brought back using the most recent off-site backup.”

“And this interlink thing is the reason everyone is speaking different languages?”

“Precisely, sir,” the escort answered. “In addition, the interlink can act as a perceptual filter, blocking out damaging sensory input. In this regard, it acts a bit like antiviral software on an ancient computer, preventing ‘hacks’ from hijacking the individual’s consciousness.”

I shook my head, uneasy. “I don’t know, guys. I understand you’re trying to help, but in my day the decision to have something implanted into your brain was nothing to enter into lightly.”

“The interlink is quite harmless, I assure you,” the escort said. “Constructed of biologically inert materials, it can remain in the body indefinitely without causing harm.”

I reached up and touched the back of my head, reflexively, and shivered. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon think about it a while longer.”

The chimpanzee shrugged and knocked a long ash from his cigar. “No hair off my ass, Captain Stone,” he said, climbing to his feet. “But if you’re going to refuse basic medical treatments, you should at least find a better solution to translation, if only as a courtesy to others.” The chimpanzee finished off the last of his martini, set the glass down on a low table, and then pointed to the silver eagle with the lit end of his cigar. “Waiting around for your bird to explain to you what everyone is talking about is getting just a bit tiresome, to say the least.”

“Ah,” the escort said, cocking its head to one side. “My apologies, sirs. I can only attribute it to my youth and inexperience, but at this long delay, a simpler solution has presented itself.”

The escort lifted its left wing, and as I watched, a small lump swelled, about the size of my thumbnail, then distended, swelling into a vaguely mushroom-like shape, a small sphere at the end of a thin tether. The escort then ducked its head down, like the bird it resembled nipping at a mite under its feathers, and as the tether disintegrated, it caught the falling lump in its beak.

The escort passed the object to me, and I held it in my hand, a small, irregularly shaped sphere.

“If you would, sir, simply insert this into your ear canal. This plug incorporates a tiny receiver that is tied into my systems.”

I delayed, my gaze lingering on the earplug, and then shrugged. What was the worst that could happen?

“Does it work?” came the voice of the chimpanzee in my left ear, speaking in English, and it took me an instant to realize the sound was being narrowcast to the plug vibrating in my ear rather than issuing from the beak of the escort.

“Yes, it seems to be, Maruti,” I said.

My words were, I assumed, instantly translated by the chimpanzee’s interlink, and as soon as I spoke, his mouth opened in a smile. “Well, thank the demiurge for that.” Sighing, he ground out the stub of his cigar in the empty martini glass, walked over to a cube sitting on a nearby counter, and dropped the glass and stub toward it. The glass, stub, and ash all vanished in a flash of light as they reached the surface of the cube, which I realized must be another of the matter-synthesizing fabricants, the debris now converted into raw materials for future fabrication. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other pressing matters to attend.”